All Garden Centres
North Yorkshire has 72 garden centres and plant nurseries listed on this site. 65 of them carry at least ten Google reviews, which is the minimum we use before ranking anywhere. The average rating across those 65 is 4.58. These are the fifteen that score highest.
North Yorkshire covers an enormous amount of ground — from the Dales to the coast — so “nearby” means something different here than it does in a city. The list below spans Skipton to Scarborough, and the driving time between the top two entries is well over an hour.
How this ranking works
Sorting by star rating alone does not work. A nursery with five perfect reviews would beat one rated 4.8 by two thousand people, and that is not a useful answer for anyone deciding where to drive on a Saturday morning.
So each centre’s score combines its Google rating with how many people left it. Centres with few reviews are pulled towards the county average; the more reviews a place has, the more its own rating is trusted on its own terms. Anywhere with fewer than ten reviews is left out.
Nothing on this page is paid for and no business has been asked for anything. Ratings were read from Google on 2 October 2026 and will drift — we re-check them.
The 15 highest-rated garden centres in North Yorkshire
| # | Garden centre | Where | Rating | Reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Hedgerow | Skipton | 5 | 104 |
| 2 | Rewela Hostas | York | 4.9 | 126 |
| 3 | Lay of the Land – Garden Centre | Settle | 4.9 | 92 |
| 4 | Reighton Nursery | Filey | 4.8 | 671 |
| 5 | The House of Foliage-The Coffee & Plant Shop By The Sea Ltd | Redcar | 4.9 | 85 |
| 6 | Horticap | Harrogate | 4.8 | 338 |
| 7 | GrowTropicals | York | 4.8 | 264 |
| 8 | R V Roger Ltd. – Award winning plant centre and nursery | Pickering | 4.8 | 161 |
| 9 | The Green Frog Garden Shop | Richmond | 4.8 | 114 |
| 10 | Simon Winstanley Ltd | Leyburn | 4.8 | 106 |
| 11 | Poets Cottage Shrub Nursery | Whitby | 4.8 | 101 |
| 12 | Knox Sawmills | Harrogate | 4.8 | 95 |
| 13 | Willow Farm Produce | Malton | 5 | 26 |
| 14 | Gledstone Gardens | Skipton | 4.8 | 94 |
| 15 | RHS Garden Harlow Carr | Harrogate | 4.7 | 7,721 |
What the numbers show
- Busiest by review count: RHS Garden Harlow Carr in Harrogate, with 7,721 Google reviews at 4.7. Volume is not quality, but it does tell you a place gets visited.
- three a straight 5.0 with ten or more reviews — The Hedgerow in Skipton leads on 104 reviews.
- The county average is 4.58. Garden centres are a well-reviewed category generally, so 4.5 is closer to par than to outstanding. The gap between fifth and fifteenth here is small.
- 68 of 72 listings carry a Google rating. The rest are usually newer or very small operations nobody has reviewed yet — their absence is not a judgement.
Before you set off
A rating tells you how people felt, not whether the gates are open. Opening hours move with the seasons and smaller nurseries often shut for part of the winter. Check the individual listing above for current hours, and ring ahead if you are driving any distance for something specific.
North Yorkshire also has an unusually strong showing of specialist growers rather than general garden centres — hostas, tropicals, fruit trees. If you want something particular rather than a general browse, the specialists are often the better trip.
