ALMONDSBURY Garden Centre has unveiled its brand new look as part of its first phase of a series of updates.

The site now boasts a new restaurant, twice the size of its predecessor, as well as new toilets and a totally renovated interior to the building.

“We want to provide more than just a shopping experience here and these improvements will certainly help us there,” said managing director Phil Hodges, who has run the business since he took it over from his father Keith in 1997 and has overseen every stage of the development.

“We would very much like to thank our many loyal customers for their support and feedback during this transformation and we look forward to them coming to visit us.”

The centre hopes that the finishing touches to the main building are set to be done this weekend, and the Garden Centre hopes to tie in celebrations with the start of the festive season.

“None of our customers will have seen us do Christmas like this before,” said marketing manager Richard Truscott.

He added: “Because the conditions of the old building were not that welcoming in colder weather, the Christmas period was never our biggest time of the year.

“Thanks to the independent consumer research that we conducted throughout the changes, we know what we are now doing is definitely the right way to do it.

“It also helped that we remained open over the past 20 weeks while work has been done. This meant we received a lot of further feedback from our customers, thankfully which has been very positive.”

Mr Hodges added: “Work has now begun on phase two of the developments which involve making improvements to the outdoor plant area.

“The work here will be to improve the levels of the outside area as well as a more efficient irrigation system which will be much better for the plants themselves.

“The ramp we used to have was quite steep and proved quite a struggle for anyone moving one of the bags of compost and due to the variety in age of our customers, we no longer felt this was acceptable.

“We are hoping that phase two will be complete by Mother's Day next year.”