The Last Spring 2022 Meeting
May 11th, a pleasent Spring evening and the last Spring meeting of 2022 for the Peterborough History Society and the last meeting to be held in the St Mark’s Church Hall. After the Summer Outside meetings in June July and August, the new venue will be the St. Andrews United Reform Church in Ledbury Road, Netherton, Peterborough.
The Speaker for the evenings meeting was Julie Murray, the Marketing director for Notcutts Garden Centres. Julie, who drove to Peterborough from the Woodbridge Headquarters, arrived with an armful of plants. She gave us a fascinating insight into the history, the ethics and the direction for the future of the Notcutts business, relating to their 18 garden centres around the country and to the Peterborough outlet in Oundle Road. During the evening Julie gave out a number of Notcutt plants and vouchers as she progressed through her presentation.
Now celebrating 125 years of business the History of the Notcutts Garden Centres is fascinating. A family-run business, the founder, Roger Crompton Notcutts (1869-1938), came from a long line of Solicitors and Lawyers going back to the early 1700s. Roger was not destine to follow his families profession, he was  more interested in the natural world and became fascinated by plants and horticulture. His first horticultural nursery was started in Ipswich in the 1890s before moving to Woodbridge in Suffolk where the garden centre headquarters are still based today and now run by the 5th generation of Roger’s family.Â
The Notcutt dynasty that followed Roger from the mid 1800s to today is well documented on their website and well worth browsing.   https://www.notcutts.co.uk/history/
The Peterborough branch of Notcutts is one of their 18 Garden Centres around the country and was begun in 1979 on a seven-acre site along Oundle Road. Although it was not the first garden centre in the City they were the first garden centre that had such a wide slection of plants, garden equipment and information to tempt the City’s gardeners. Today Peterborough’s Notcutts is in the process of a planned site renovation.
To find out more about Notcutts go to –
