If I were to makeover the Lincoln Road Mitre 10 Garden Centre....
Because it is basically a flat square with walls all around, it would be easy to design something that plays on this perfect, square shaped symmetry. No more plants in boring long supermarket style rows. I would open out the space to make it more customer friendly, so that when you walk around it's like being IN a garden.
As you walk into the Garden Centre, I would have an arch covered with climbing plants, and in the nook near the entrance a water feature display with ferns and hanging baskets and orchids in the cool shade. Then off to the side a little library (an actual little library of gardening books knocked together out of wood off cuts from the ingenious Mitre 10 handyman carpenters) and painted in Mitre 10 colours. Then as you walk on further all around the walls of Mitre 10 are trellis with climbers growing up the walls, and in each nook there's a different display of plants, with low hedging all around to contain them.
There is paving laid down so you can see the different paths you can make using different materials. And around the edges of the paths, edging plants and annuals. Then there's a hillock made of ground cover plants. In the centre of the space is a green playground where children can play and climb trees in the middle. And on the sunny side of Mitre 10 is a large square foot kitchen garden of raised beds near the Columbus Cafe, which has lots of herbs around and coffee plants.
Then there's the she sheds and Men caves display. The She Sheds are filled with pink tools and the Mens caves have blue tools, and this is also where the gifts section is.
There is a butterfly garden display and beehives and worm farms section with all the plants needed for that. And around Mitre 10 there would be a hedge plant clipped with the words Mitre 10 in it, like I've seen in motorways around Toronto, where, instead of billboards, businesses clip their names into hedges.
There is also a clearance corner of plants that are desperately needing a new home, and they have signs stuck in their pots like 'take me home' and 'love me, I'm cheap'.
There is also seats in this garden centre so shoppers can rest their weary legs for a bit apart from the cafe and read some DIY gardening books or maybe talk with the staff who are busy ferrying plants from place to place and looking after them. In the indoor section are the house plants on display.
There is a contest to grow the biggest orange pumpkin at Mitre 10 because it's the biggest, most orange store in town. Along with orange, tangelo and mandarin trees of course. Every day as the giant pumpkins grow measurements are taken along with the giant beans stalks and sunflowers that can reach to the rafters of the largest mega garden centre in all of New Zealand. Try and beat that, Bunnings.
