Peter Hulatt from the Camden Garden Centre

This feature appeared in our London Blooms  2025 special edition celebrating spring

WHETHER it’s a new traditional terracotta pot, an unusual Japan pot plant or a handy tips on how plants can flourish in shady spaces of inner London, the multi-award-winning Camden Garden Centre is the place to go.

The charity-run centre – in the borough for 42 years – is a thriving business on council land that answers to no “fat cat shareholders” and ploughs all its money back into the project.

It also prides itself in helping the community grow – with a training scheme that helps people from “disadvantaged” backgrounds find work and horticultural training.

Managing director Peter Hulatt, celebrating 32 years at the centre this week, said: “We were one of the very first social enterprises in the country, before that term was even invented.

“There was a group of us and we wanted to start a business. It could have been anything really – a print shop, a garage. It just so happened people were interested in gardening and someone mentioned garden centres, and we thought, why not?

“From the start, we employed permanent people and also took trainees from disadvantaged backgrounds.

“We feel we are a real community asset. We hope the council feel that way about us too. We are very much about environmental things, but at the same time we are about helping people get back into work.

“The idea was to help train them up and hopefully they become more employable than before.

“We help people learn to drive, give lessons on how to do accounts, in retail, and of course horticulture.
There are lots of different strands we do.

“But for most people it will be their first ever job and it will be about general confidence-building.

“It’s about learning to look after yourself, get up in the morning, get your lunch ready and get there on time – all those things we take for granted. For a lot of them, all of this is new. Hopefully they will come to us and understand about work and go on to something else better equipped.

“We do advertise all this, and it’s important for people to understand that. But at the end of the day the first thing we need to be is a strong and successful business that people want to come to.”

Mr Hulatt, who worked in recruitment for the National Coal Board, was recently recognised with a BEM medal at a ceremony in the Tower of London and is due to meet the King in a garden soirée at Buckingham Palace.

He said he saw the gong as recognition of the wider project rather than an individual award.

Camden Garden Centre started out a mile up the road in Kentish Town on a site that was taken back by the council for redevelopment.

Its current home was a base for Greenham Concrete, and before that it was an old terracotta works, and a depot for Royal Doulton ceramics.

Part of the building was also a rail depot, and the arcs of the tunnels can be seen in the remaining building.

Mr Hulatt said: “The whole area of King’s Cross has a long historical attachment to concrete and cement. There were lime kilns here, and then the railways came in and they were bringing in coal. The building is a Victorian building and the old North London Line runs along the back.

The garden centre has won a string of awards – including UK garden centre of the year – and Mr Hulatt said there was “a huge band of loyal customers”.

He added: “They come to us because we are a good garden centre providing a fantastic range of plants, great customer service and lots of things you won’t find anywhere else.

“What Londoners want is different to what a gardener wants out in the sticks. Our garden are quite shady. They are smaller. We have a lot of flat-dwellers. We have plants you want to put on a balcony, or window boxes. We have about 15,000 members of our reward card club. We have just recently launched a new app, which you might want to download for yourself. So we must be doing something right.
“We pride ourselves on our advice. If you don’t know what to do, don’t worry, we can help.”

The flowers and plants are brought from independent growers and Mr Hulatt said one of the most unusual plants he had in stock was a plant that generally orientated in Japan, Kirengeshoma.

He added: “Gardening helps with the cleaner air. It provides a habitat for bees. More so, it’s about fitness. Gardening is one of the best things you can do – watering, digging. And because we know more about mental health than we used to, after Covid, suddenly people realised how important gardening was for our wellbeing.”

Mr Hulatt said he had a tiny garden growing up in his family home, adding: “I was more into playing football then, and knocking the plants over. But my mum had hydrangeas, lovely pink ones and lilacs too, so those are very special to me.”