Its display is one of the most impressive in the Bristol area
Whitehall Garden Centre in Whitchurch – the 2024 Christmas shop display(Image: Adele Rodgers/Whitehall)
The former Whitehall garden centre in Whitchurch will be bringing back its massive Christmas shop and displays for 2025, staff have confirmed. Now under the umbrella of new owners Otter Garden Centres, the popular Whitchurch venue will boast a ‘Whitehall Christmas with an Otter twist’.
An opening evening on October 22 will launch the festivities, which will run from 3-7pm and is free for all customers to attend. There will be a free drink on entry just after 3pm and the garden centre’s restaurant will be remaining open until 6pm, serving up hot and cold food.
The garden centre is a firm favourite among both locals and visitors from afar when it comes to its incredible Christmas offering. BristolLive spoke to manager Adele Rodgers, who has worked at the site for the past 12 years and is an expert when it comes to all things Christmas at the venue.
She said: “Obviously we’re still very much in a transitional period at the moment. We’re trading as Otter but the stock we’ve had delivered this year is actually the stock that was ordered by Whitehall. So it’s still going to be as big, just with a little bit of a twist on it.”
Whitehall Garden Centre in Whitchurch – the 2024 Christmas shop display(Image: Adele Rodgers/Whitehall)
And that’s not all that’s changed. Usually Adele and her team would spend months getting the Christmas shop ready, with preparations beginning way back in the summer months each year, and then the staff have the job of keeping it all secret until its opening. However, shoppers this year may have spotted that there’s already some sections and departments of Christmas in store to browse.
Adele says: “There are a couple of areas that customers can come in and shop already. That’s the slight difference with previous years. With Whitehall we kept everything secret until it was all ready to go. Whereas now we’re opening it department by department.”
BristolLive reported last year how the Whitchurch garden centre’s iconic shop display was huge, with walls spanning 8ft filled with floor-to-ceiling decorations in places, as well as a Christmassy walkway, huge Santa, display of Lemax villages, plush toys, lights, trees, woodland scenes and even singing reindeer.
Both the Whitchurch and Lacock Whitehall teams helped build the sets and scenery in the past, and place every single decoration on the shop floor. You can see what last year’s Christmas shop and displays looked like in our picture gallery here.
Whitehall takeover
BristolLive reported in July that Otter Garden Centres had acquired the Whitchurch branch of Whitehall, making it the eighth site to join Otter. The site was one of three centres operated by Whitehall Garden Centres, with the Woodborough Garden Centre site in Pewsey also being sold in August. The Lacock, Chippenham venue remains.
Otter confirmed that all current staff, including the centre manager, will remain in their roles, with no significant changes planned for the day-to-day operations of the Whitchurch site.
The sale of the Whitchurch centre comes a year after it was reported that the venue had been listed on the market. At the time, reasons for the sale included the directors “trying to have slightly less work” and “stepping back from the overall running of all three sites”.
And Adele tells BristolLive that customers are still trying to get used to the change. “We are still getting some customers who still confuse us with Whitehall. But we’re getting there slowly,” she says.