The early investment went into improving our retail offer alongside a brand new restaurant and coffee shop. Grasshoppers children’s play area quickly followed and this proved a huge hit. In 2019, we completed our first new building which gave us a fantastic new plant canopy as well as an indoor play area for Grass Hoppers.

In 2020, we added a two storey extension onto the front of the building which has introduced more retail space for gardening, the Mezzanine restaurant and some great facilities and offices for our team. With an investment of around £7m into the business, we now have over 250 people working at Tong and we are all very proud of the award winning garden centre that we are today.

In 2022, the next phase of ambitious growth was the opening of Tingley Garden Centre in south Leeds – Tong’s sister centre which also boasts Mission Out, our brand new outdoor adventure attraction for older children. Tingley is also home to Bloom’s Kitchen, Grass Hoppers and our Hearty’s food hall.

In the same year, the business acquired the long-established Stephen H Smith centres based in Otley and Bingley, great additions to the family and a huge stride forward in delivering the vision for multiple sites across Yorkshire.

Investment and redevelopment at Otley and Bingley saw the centres transform in line with both Tong and Tingley and the team introduced the parent brand, Yorkshire Garden Centres, to host the family of brands, created across all the sites, for families to enjoy.

In 2024, the two Dean’s Garden Centre sites at York and Scarborough were added to our family of sites at Tong, Tingley, Otley and Bingley. The Dean’s business dates back to 1968 when they opened the York store on a four acre site at Stockton on the Forest. This was followed by the acquisition of the eight-acre Scarborough site in 1986.