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At the IGC Show in Chicago, Garden Centers of America announced top honors in its inaugural GCA Bathroom Awards, which recognizes independent garden center restrooms that are clean, fresh and well designed.
Barton Grange Garden Centre in Preston, United Kingdom, took home the Best Of The Best Award for its spectacularly designed men’s and women’s restrooms, which include flower-shaped urinals, original flower artwork painted on the walls, no-touch technology for flushing toilets and turning on taps, two separate disabled bathrooms and two separate baby changing rooms with toilets, and a large waiting area with room for carts and wheelchairs.
“Barton Grange founder, Ada Topping, said ‘you can judge a place by its toilets,’ and we still believe, today, that a visit to the bathroom is a key feature of the customer experience,” writes Guy Topping of Barton Grange about the importance of their restrooms. “With this in mind, we designed our restrooms to be as stylish and memorable as the rest of our centre.”
No less impressive are the additional winners in the Bathroom Awards, all of which have dedicated space and resources to this vital aspect of customer service. The Gold winner is Sheridan Nurseries in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada for its well-appointed French country restroom. Two garden centers received Silver Awards: Al’s Garden Center in Sherwood, Ore., for its beach-themed bathroom and Chalet in Wilmette, Ill., for bathrooms that resemble intimate garden spaces.
And four retailers received Awards of Merit for their locations: The Barn Nursery in Chattanooga, Tenn., for a barn-themed restroom; Beaver Bark Gift & Garden in Richland, Wash., for its Western-themed bathroom; Linder’s Garden Center in St. Paul, Minn., for its outstanding use or signage and marketing outside the restroom; and Plantland in Verdale, Wash., for its wonderful design elements.
The Bathroom Awards, sponsored by the IGC Show, were created as the retail space becomes ever more competitive and independent garden centers continue to try to find ways to impart their value to customers. In retail guru Paco Underhill’s most recent book, What Women Want, he says clean and convenient restrooms ranked very high in a woman’s decision of where to shop. In the book he said, “If you think about every major new hotel or restaurant, you realize that having a fantastic women’s bathroom is a design statement that creates buzz.”
Image: Clark Sorensen, artist