Border garden centre plans café

A Herefordshire garden centre plans to add a “historic” cabin that will serve as its new café.

J & P Turner has been an animal feed merchants in Kington since 1801, more recently introducing a garden centre to its Arrow Mills site in the border town’s Island Terrace, where a shop and car park were completed in 2019.

It is now seeking planning permission (application 240969) to bring back a 100-year-old timber framed building, which would take the place of a “falling down” shed currently housing 200 chickens, a statement with the application explains.

To be open at the same time as the garden centre, the new café would “open up areas never seen” to customers.

The “low-rise”, single-storey building had been in use at the garden centre before being removed in the 2019 redevelopment, “while deciding what to do with it”.

If brought back, it would “blend in as much as possible with the surrounding area” and would be surrounded by shrubs and a hedge, the statement says.

The café would be wheelchair-accessible and would include a disabled toilet along with baby changing facilities. It would create “one to three” new jobs.

Though the riverside premises is classed as flood zone 3, or high-risk, the spot where the café will go has never flooded, the company maintains.

Comments on its application can be made until October 31.