10 Cotswold garden centres you should visit for their café
Burford Garden Company
Burford, Oxfordshire, OX18 4PA
Burford Garden Company has an excellent café, high quality plants, chic garden/home accessories, a gift shop and children’s toys with local produce and art for sale. We call it the Daylesford of garden centres! If we fancy a trip to Burford Garden Centre we set aside a whole day for the visit and everyone in the family has to hear about it, like when someone takes a trip to Ikea.
Café open 7 days a week for breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea
Highfield Garden World
Whitminster, Gloucester, GL2 7PB
Highfield is Gloucestershire’s leading independent garden centre. There’s so much to look at, inside and out. You’ll find clothes, homewares, gifts, local food produce, a pet and reptile centre, garden plants and accessories and the café is exceptional. Highfield received a £2.5m facelift in 2010 that has propelled this garden centre to a day out destination. It’s so popular they have introduced parking for coaches.
Café open 7 days a week for breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea
Dobbies
Siddington, Cirencester, GL7 6EU
Dobbies in Cirencester has undergone a massive makeover and is dog and child friendly, with an outdoor play centre. It’s now a huge, open plan centre with a Butcher, Lakeland, Laithwaites, local produce hall, Hotter shoes, Aquatics Centre, an Amazon Locker, and lots of beautiful things to buy for the home and garden. The indoor plant selection is the best! The restaurant is vast and you could be mistaken for thinking you were in a restaurant in John Lewis! For a weekend treat we recommend the Chocolate Afternoon Tea for just £12.50! Coming up in September is the Downton Abbey themed version!
Restaurant open 7 days a week for breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea
The Nursery at Miserden
Miserden, Nr Stroud, GL6 7JA
We love telling people about Miserden Nursery and The Garden Café! Read our blog post for more info. We urge you to borrow a doggy and take a visit to the beautiful honey coloured Miserden Estate for a nature walk and then head back to the nursery’s magnificent period glasshouse café for a cuppa. The superb cakes are made by The Lavender Bakehouse in Stroud and they host regular popular pop-up foodie nights with well known local chefs and catering experts such as Rubols Fusion Kitchen, Soushi and The Camp Kitchen.
Open Tuesday to Sunday for snacks, light lunches and cakes and occasional evenings for pop-up dining
Fosseway Garden Centre
Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, GL56 0DS
At Fosseway Garden Centre you’ll find Timothy’s restaurant – the jewel in this garden centre’s crown and another corker of an eatery! Offering fabulous homemade cakes, very reasonably priced and championing local ingredients (genuinely excellent)! Look out for their events and children’s activities.
Restaurant open 7 days a week for breakfast, lunch (inc Sunday roasts) and afternoon tea
The Fairview Gardener
Churcham, Gloucester, GL2 8AR
The Fairview Gardener and Tea Rooms everything is freshly made on the premises daily, using locally-sourced produce wherever possible and served to customers in a beautiful wooden clad, rustic café. With a quality over quantity approach, they offer a choice of 3 home-baked hot dishes every lunchtime – one meat, one fish and one vegetarian, all served with a choice of vegetables or salad. The reviews online say it all! Visit their Facebook page for much more info.
Tea Rooms open 7 days a week for breakfast and lunch and afternoon treats
Batsford Arboretum and Garden Centre
Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire GL56 9QB
A trip to Batsford Arboretum will easily fill a day out and at the end of all that adventuring and physical exercise, at the heart of the Visitor Centre, you should recharge at the Garden Terrace Café. Enjoy a leisurely coffee or lunch, or indulge in sumptuous cakes with afternoon tea! Take some time out on their lovely terrace overlooking the Plant Centre.
Garden Terrace Café is open 7 days a week for breakfast, lunch and afternoon cakes and snacks
Wyatts Garden Centre and Farm Shop
Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, OX7 5SH
Wyatts is quite the entrepreneurial business with a garden centre, ice cream business, farm shop, deli and lovely café on site. They do it all very well too! Menu highlights include Fish and Chips with a delicious Hooky Beer (a CFB favourite) batter on Fridays and homemade Wyatts’ artisan ice cream in 21 fabulous flavours, but what on earth is Croccantini flavour? We’ll have to find out! Superb Sunday Roasts too!
Tea Rooms open 7 days a week for breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea
Toddington Garden Centre
Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, GL54 5DT
This family run, independent garden centre (no website) is only a few steps away from Gloucestershire’s working steam railway, GWSR. The garden centre doesn’t have it’s own café, but literally round the corner is The Coffee Pot, a charmingly simple 1950’s style platform café, where you’ll find sandwiches, snacks, local beers (Goff’s Brewery is nearby) and ice creams, and you can sit and enjoy the view. It’s not a bad life is it!
Opening times are seasonal and vary due to train departure schedule. Check before visiting. If open, times are usually 10:00am until 4:00pm.
3 Shires Garden Centre
Newent, Gloucestershire, GL18 1DL
The Gallery Carvery & Restaurant services locally sourced meat, freshly roasted daily at their carvery, as well as homemade Chef’s specials with vegetarian dishes, and Pie of the Day. As a lighter option, they also serve homemade soup and jacket potatoes, sarnies, quiches, gourmet sausage rolls and salads. They call their children’s meals ‘The Young Grower’s Lunch’ which is adorable and a large Full English only costs £7.95! Blue Diamond has recently acquired Nailsworth Garden Centre, which we’ve been visiting for round about 30 years (I can’t quite believe that) with our Grandma. We’ll always know it as ‘The Waterside’. Last time we visited they were renovating the centre, so look out for an improved restaurant there any day now, if not already!
Tea Rooms open 7 days a week for breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea
Read our review of Miserden Garden Café »
