UK: Blooms Garden Centre reopens after fire

A garden centre near Newport that was destroyed in a blaze two years ago is set to reopen next week. Blooms Garden Centre, on Newport Road, St Mellons, was ravaged by a fire on November 20, 2013.

Firefighters were able to contain the flames, to stop them spreading to nearby houses or the pet store adjacent to the garden centre, but the blaze that started on the Wednesday night was still smouldering late on Thursday.

Now, after tireless work to restore the garden centre to its former glory, it is being reopened as Cardiff’s Wyevalley Garden Centre.

A spokesman from the company said: “We've all put in a lot of hard work, so your centre is now even better than before.”

To celebrate the re-opening of the new garden centre a special launch event is set to be held nearly a year to the day after the fire, on Saturday, November 21.

Father Christmas will be arriving and there will also be the opening of his Elf Workshop at 10am.

Originally a plant nursery, the site was first cultivated by Jean Hughes, from Newport, who set up what was then Uskley Nursery in the 1950s with her brother Malcolm Andrew, when they were just 19 and 24.

Speaking to the Argus shortly after the fire, she said: “When we started, it was just 10 acres of field and nothing else.

“By the time my brother sold it, it had an acre of glass houses. We couldn’t have any days off because we had boilers that had to be stoked and to give the tomatoes ventilation. Later, it was all automated and that gave us more time off.”

She added about the blaze: “It is all gutted down there. It’s just all black and terrible. Malcolm would be mortified if he could see it now.”

Wyevalley Garden Centre will reopen at 9am on Thursday, November 19, before the launch event at 10am on Saturday, November 21.

Source: South Wales Argus

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