Mike Burks announced as Garden Centre Association’s chairman elect for 2020

Mike Burks, managing director of The Gardens Group, will become chairman of the Garden Centre Association (GCA) in January 2020, heading up the trade organisation which represents nearly 200 garden centres nationwide. Elected by members of the GCA, Mike will work alongside the GCA executive and full board of elected directors to continue the association’s work in building relationships and promoting best practice across the industry.

Mike (pictured above), who has spent the past three decades running three multi award-winning garden centres in Dorset and Somerset, explains:

“I am greatly looking forward to my chairmanship and am lucky that the GCA has been in excellent hands with Mike Lind. With the association in such good shape, I can focus much of my time on driving forward with new initiatives and plan to visit many garden centres, attend meetings and work closely with the team to develop GROW, an e-learning tool that is very close to my heart, to make sure our members can get the most out of this valuable system. As well as sharing membership success stories, such as those of the recently awarded Fron Goch, Perrywood and The Old Railway Line, who also brought some exciting ideas and standards into the GCA, I'm keen to demonstrate the role that the industry can play in protecting wildlife and the environment, as well as bringing people together through plants and gardening to promote better health and wellbeing. We are in an enviable position, in that so many trends and needs of the modern world cross our path, so we need to work together to make the most of these opportunities.”

The Garden Centre Association announced its Chairman elect for 2020/2021 at its annual conference, which was held at the Luton Hoo Hotel on Wednesday 23 January.

For more information about The Gardens Group, visit www.thegardensgroup.co.uk.