Retail Horticulture Management FdA (Part-time)

Course overview

This course is delivered by Kingston Maurwood College.

Retail Horticulture is a rapidly growing sector. The garden centre industry itself is only 40 years old and is undergoing a period of significant change resulting in the need for staff with greater retail management skills due to the increasing expectation of the consumer.

The development of a foundation degree in this area is based upon the pressing needs of the industry, where rapid growth, increased sophistication and lack of nationally recognised qualification has meant a significant skills shortage.

The garden centre sector has moved a long way from the image of the ‘leaking greenhouse’. Many destination sites occupy areas of a few hectares and may include other attractions such as display gardens, mazes, farm shops, butterfly farms and miniature railways in addition to other concession retailers on the site. Managing these activities requires a skills set far beyond horticultural knowledge.

Kingston Maurward will offer a blended learning approach, which will include a mixture of Virtual Learning, allowing students to study around peak trading periods and a series of ‘master-classes’. These sessions will operate on a regional basis, hosted at key garden centre sites which will enable the learners to exchange ideas and concepts, plus take advantage of some of the most innovative retailing in the sector. Many centres have invested in conference and training facilities on-site as an addition to their core business and make them available for such industry functions and external organisations.

The college also has agreement from a major publisher to utilise the epos data which they capture on a weekly basis from major garden centres to develop sales rank charts. This is a resource which has not been available for such as qualification up until now and is based on the sales of garden centres totalling £100 million annually. In addition learners will also be allowed access to the archive of pictures showing best practice on all aspects of garden centre retailing. This resource will allow students to work with the most up to date information possible and is more timely than anything else available to the market.