60 Good Deeds for 60th Anniversary

Otter Garden Centres is kicking off celebrations for its sixtieth anniversary celebrations with a special pledge set to benefit the communities local to its seven branches.

The family-run business – which started in 1964 – will be carrying out 60 ‘good deeds’ across the year. These will be achieved by working with charities, schools and community organisations.

As an example, the Ottery St Mary garden centre has undertaken its first good deed, the donation of a fire pit to Ottery St Mary Scouts. During January the leaders of the group are teaching their scouts about fire safety and fire-lighting skills, before introducing cooking over fire as an ongoing activity through the year. Unable to have an open fire on their site, they approached Otter Garden Centres and were delighted to be offered the fire pit.

Future ‘good deeds’ will include a mix of large and small activities, from working with local schools to enhance their outdoor spaces to planting up community hospital gardens; for example Ottery St Mary Hospital where the team has already started clearing out two overgrown borders ready to replant with suitable flowering plants. And throughout the year, each Otter branch will be putting on fundraising events for their chosen charity.

Managing Director, Jacqui Taylor whose parents Malcolm and Marilyn White founded the company, said: “We really are keen to make a difference to our local communities throughout this very special year. As a family-run business we have always believed in building close relationships with the neighbourhoods we are part of, whether through sponsoring sports teams or offering free sunflowers seeds.   

“At the same time, we are working to ensure our teams flourish ; we have many long-standing colleagues at our branches, whose loyalty and hard work we really do appreciate, so they will be very much a part of our celebrations.”

Otter Garden Centres started out as a small operation when Malcolm and Marilyn set up on a plot of land just outside Ottery St Mary, selling plants from their mobile home and supplying local markets. This garden centre is now one of the largest in the UK. As well as the other six garden centres, the business has three nurseries where it grows around 80% of the plants sold. 

A new history timeline has been added to the company's website to explain more about the foundations of the business and how it has developed over the last 60 years. To read this, visit: www.ottergardencentres.com/about-otter