Member Article

Pickering garden centre plants seeds for growth

The Steam and Moorland Garden and Machinery Centre in Pickering is getting ready for a period of new growth with the construction of a major extension, supported by Yorkshire Bank.

The family-run garden centre, which sits at the gateway to the North York Moors National Park, was established in 2001 by husband and wife Charles and Bernadette Hopkinson.

The centre is building a new 7,200 square foot extension which will be home to a new café, retail space and visitor toilets.

The garden centre currently has a 40-cover café; with the new development this will increase to 150 covers.

Steam and Moorland employs around 25 staff from the local area – a mixture of full and part-time – but is expecting to create a further 10 jobs when the new café and retail area is up and running.

Yorkshire Bank has provided a £450k loan to help build the new extension, which is expected to be open in time for Easter.

In total the new extension is costing around £650k to build, with the owners investing around £200k of their own funds to the project.

The funding was arranged by Pete Sumners, business development manager at Yorkshire Bank’s Business and Private Banking Centre in York.

Charles Hopkinson said the development of the new extension should pave the way for more visitors all-year round. He said: “Since we opened Steam and Moorland 15 years ago, we’ve enjoyed tremendous support from our customers – both locals and the passing tourist trade.

“We are seeing increasing numbers of people coming through our doors and we felt now was the right time to invest to help deliver an even better experience.

“During the summer months we can be very busy, particularly with coach parties. On several occasions we have had to turn groups away but when we open this new extension we will be able to cater for larger numbers.

“We spent a lot of time looking around and speaking to a large number of local banks who could help us. We felt Yorkshire Bank was the perfect fit for us. The team has worked hard to really understand our business and provided us with the right support quickly.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ellen Forster .