Owner of Waterside Garden Centre near Peterborough tells of battle to keep 34-year-old business afloat after 'devastating' flood

The owner of a garden centre near Peterborough has thanked staff for their work in the fight to reopen the venue after devastating floods.

The Waterside Garden Centre, in King Street, Baston, had been closed since January 2 this year after flood water up to four feet deep poured through the building and its outdoor areas following torrential downpours at the start of the year.

Owner Andy Parrott said: “It was devastating. We were wiped out.

We’ve had one day of trading this year on January 2 and since then we’ve not had any income.

“We’ve lost £1.4 million in earnings with the insurance bill likely to be between £3 million and £4 million.

"The staff have been terrific and all have been here working each day to get it ready to reopen.

“We had a soft re-opening on Friday (April 26) and then we decided to put it on Facebook and we were delighted with the response.

"We’ve been very busy over the weekend, which was great.

”We were also very apprehensive in case things didn’t work but it all went very well.

"We were delighted to see customers return and their reaction has been fantastic.”

Mr Parrott established the Waterside Garden Centre on March 17, 1990 and it currently employs 100 members of staff and although it has suffered previous flooding, the resulting closures have only been one or two days.

He said: “This time the amount of water literally wiped us out.

"In places the water was four feet deep.

"Everything has had to be replaced – walls, carpets, electrics, fuses boxes, furniture and stock.

"Ninety five per cent of the stock has gone – it was just not suitable to be sold.

"We would have been here all year just cleaning and disinfecting the stock and then putting in a new barcode on everything.

"This has been a worse challenge than Covid-19 was and that was horrible.

"This was worse as we couldn’t see an end to it. Despite that, I was always confident that we would get the business reopened.

“But now it has never looked so good – the premises look amazing.”