THE Old Railway Line Garden Centre, located in Three Cocks between Brecon and Hay-on-Wye, collected an impressive nine awards at the annual Wales and West Garden Centre Association’s (GCA) regional awards at Castle Gardens, Sherborne recently.

The family-run, independent garden centre was awarded the top prize of ‘Best Garden Centre’ in Wales and the West for the eighth consecutive year alongside ‘Best Customer Service’, ‘Best Garden Centre Restaurant’ and ‘Best Retailer’ in garden products, outdoor living and indoor lifestyle departments. The garden centre was also recognised for ‘Environmental Opportunities’, ‘Commercial Innovation and Creativity’ as well as being labelled a ‘Highly Commended Garden Centre’.

Director, Mark Cleary said, “We are delighted to have been awarded ‘Best Garden Centre’ in Wales and the West for the eighth year in a row. It’s a true testament to our amazing, creative and hard-working team who work tirelessly to both maintain and improve our standards.

“Our ethos is based around creating the best customer experience possible so to be recognised by the Garden Centre Association for our efforts, by winning ‘Best Garden Centre’ alongside the customer service award, is brilliant.

“All shop departments and our Railway Restaurant were credited with an award each which demonstrates consistency throughout the business. We have a fantastic team who work together to create somewhere for our loyal customers to visit and enjoy.

“We are immensely proud of the team’s achievements at this year’s GCA regional awards and look forward to the national results in January, which marks the start of our 30th year in business celebrations.”

The GCA represents over 200 garden centres nationwide. Through sharing information and its inspection programme the GCA helps members to achieve high standards in customer service, plant quality and reliability. The awards are decided by the results of the annual inspections, which take place at all GCA garden centres. Garden centres have no advance warning about when their inspection will take place and they do not have the option to turn away the inspector.

The award-winning, independent, family-run garden centre was established in 1990 by owners, Mark and Christina Cleary. It provides customers with quality plants, gardening products, indoor and outdoor living goods, pet care products, giftware and furniture. The Old Railway Line is also home to a farm shop stocking products from over 60 local and Welsh suppliers and a 150 seater restaurant offering home cooked food.