GCA Releases New GROW Course On Herbaceous Plants

GARDEN Centre Association (GCA) and Horticultural Trades Association (HTA) members can now access the latest GCA Garden Retail Online Workshops (GROW) course and this time it’s designed to help their plant area teams (August 2025).

The Herbaceous Plants course is the 97^th workshop to be added to the GCA’s award-winning e-learning platform.

Antony Snow, GROW’s Instructional Designer, explains: “Herbaceous plants are very popular with gardeners as many are easy to grow and provide seasonal interest throughout the year.

“Due to their popularity, this versatile group of plants make up a significant proportion of sales in the plant area and are hugely important to our members and their businesses, so I’m delighted to offer this introduction to provide their teams with the knowledge and confidence to inspire their customers.”

GROW provides an extensive set of important courses on subject matter designed to help staff successfully assist customers and colleagues as needed.

Peter Burks, CEO at the GCA, says: “GROW is an essential, cost-effective staff training and personal development tool that our members rate highly. It’s available 24/7, 365 days of the year, making it ideal for garden centre employees to use it when convenient for them.

“If you’d like to explore GROW further, or find out more about this course and the other 96 that are available through this wonderful, easy to access, online platform, please contact Antony direct or take a look at our dedicated webpage www.gca.org.uk/gca-grow-information. You can also get in touch with Antony by emailing grow@gca.org.uk.”

GROW started as an initial idea, devised during a strategy meeting of the GCA’s executive committee, to bring education and training tailored to individuals employed in the garden centre industry.

It’s a self-funding and non-profit facility with any surpluses being reinvested into its ongoing development and improvement. There are currently 97 courses and more than 12,000 GROW users throughout the UK.

These courses include a wide range of topics that cover horticulture, customer service, food safety, regulated sales and health and safety.

All the courses have been written by experts in their field and are designed to apply to a garden centre environment, with the content for the horticultural courses drawing on the vast experience of members within the GCA.

The new course is accessible immediately to existing subscribers.

The GCA represents more than 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.

Members with the highest standards receive awards at its regional summer events and its Annual Conference in January each year.

Tickets for the GCA’s 2026 Annual Conference are now on sale via the members’ section on the body’s website or via https://gca.digitickets.co.uk/.

For further information, please visit www.gca.org.uk.

Source : GCA

Image : GCA CEO, Peter Burks with herbaceous plants at member Ruxley Manor Garden Centre to celebrate the launch of the latest Garden Retail Online Workshops (GROW) course<!--EndFragment-->

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