Thompsons Plant & Garden Centres are a family run Garden Centre group consisting of five Retails sites. We specialise in supplying our garden centres with our very own plants, grown on five nursery sites in the south east.

As well as our extensive collection of plants we aim to provide everything you would need for your garden. At all of our garden centres you will find compost, weedkillers, insecticides, lawn care products, plant food, watering equipment, houseplants, fencing, stoneware, tubs and baskets, fruit & vegetables and much more.

Our growing nurseries all specialise in particular areas, helping us make sure we supply our own garden centres with a diverse choice of freshly delivered plants. It is very important to us to produce our own plants and not have to rely on importing plants from other countries. Our plants are all grown in the south east, are fresher and a better quality as they have less miles to travel to their destinations.

Woodlands Nursery specialises in Hardy Nursery Stock, particularly shrubs, It is situated only a couple of hundred yards away from our Petham Garden Centre. Our Motspur Park Nursery grows all of our seasonal bedding plants, and Greentiles Nursery grows a wide range of Herbs, perennials and other garden plants. It is situated on the Isle of Wight within a mile of the Garden Centre.  Longlands Nursery, also on the Isle of Wight, is our propagation facility for hardy nursery stock for early spring sales as well as architectural plants.

The most recent addition to the Thompson Group is our Christmas Tree farm on the Isle of Wight. It consists of three separate pieces of land, one of which serves as a retail site for the Month of December. This site now enable us to grow and supply our Garden Centres with our very own trees.

History Of Thompsons

The Thompson Group started as a partnership between Mr and Mrs Thompson in 1976.  They bought a three acre derelict orchard near Canterbury and set about converting it into a small nursery where they grew and sold plants, fruit and vegetables, and little else. At the time, Mr & Mrs Thompson had other jobs and they were able to give these up as the business grew.

The founding Principle of the business was to grow the best quality plants and offer them direct to the public at reasonable prices.  This strategy provided growth and it was not long before some land was rented to grow Hardy Nursery Stock.  This was opposite the retail site and was eventually named after the farmer Bill Wood who gave the land to Mr & Mrs Thompson, this site is known as Woodlands.

During the 1980's both the site at Chislehurst and Welling were brought and became the leading retail sites for the company, the retail site at Petham was converted over for production.

In 1992 the company acquired a nursery at Motspur Park, Surrey and the Petham Site was converted back over to Retail.  Also in 1992 we bought a retail site on the Isle of Wight and started to trade from there too.  A further three production sites were purchased on the Isle of Wight and these specialised in other areas of plant production.  In 1999 we took over the lease on another retail site at Shepperton in Middlesex.