Kitchen Garden Forum

Although I no longer belong to HDRA, which to me will forever be HDRA however many name changes it has, I very much care what happens to it.
As usual John Walker, who I suspect has very little knowledge of the world of commerce, makes so many meaningless comments about the tie-up between HDRA and Webb’s Garden Centres having made it abundantly clear what he thinks of Garden Centres in last months (Feb) issue of KG magazine. One wonders why he has bothered to renew his subscription to GO this year.
It is obvious the GO may have got themselves financially embarrassed and with Webb’s taking over all the things that GO may not have as much expertise to run perhaps things will improve and GO can channel their efforts into what the HDRA was set up to do in the first place. Research!
Bob Sherman and his fellow directors must have gone through hell over the last few months and I am quite that sure they have done their utmost to keep things afloat.
Quite frankly they can do well without the John Walker’s of this world who represent next to no gardeners in the main run of things. Extremists are always a pain but on the other hand the information supplied by Bob Sherman over the years to this magazine’s readers has been of immense value to us all.
I wish HDRA (GO) the very best in their new partnership and three cheers for Bob Sherman and a large thank you for his very valued input to the magazine over the years.
JB.

Johnboy. Maybe if they had tested the water with the members first !

I've read both articles and overall I am swayed by Bob Sherman's view that if the shop etc is managed by an experienced garden centre then the HDRA can get on with what it was set up to do.

I was quite shocked when I read about the merger last month in this magazine and thought it rather strange that there was no mention of it in any of the literature from them - with my Seed library catalogue etc. I have had problems in the past when trying to access their web site and haven't tried for a while, so I suppose it was my fault for not keeping up to date. But not all their members will have computers and it does seem sneaky to have done all this before letting everyone know.

From what we said in an earlier posting, it was clear they were struggling financially, so I suppose if this saves them it is better than them going belly up. After all there is very little they can do without the finances. A lot of good ideas seem to founder when they bite off more than they can chew, and they did go more theme park entertainment centre when they got that huge grant a few years ago. Obviously they haven't attracted the number of visitors they anticipated.