Garden Centre Department Manager Leisure

Location: Alton

Contract type: Permanent

Hours: Full Time

Hours: 45 Hours Including Weekends

About Us

British Garden Centres is the UK's largest family owned garden centre group, with over 78 centres nationwide. Founded by the Stubbs family, the business has grown rapidly through significant expansion and acquisitions, evolving from its first site at Woodthorpe Garden Centre into a national brand.

The group now includes garden centres, restaurants, nurseries and distribution centres, employing more than 3,500 colleagues across the UK. Despite its scale, British Garden Centres maintains strong family values, a community focus, and a commitment to providing a welcoming and supportive environment for both customers and employees.

We are looking for a Garden Centre Department Manager to join our forward-thinking team. Working in the Garden Centre this is a high-volume environment with a fast turnaround.

The successful candidate should have proven managerial experience and be physically fit as this is a very hands-on role and some heavy lifting may be required.

A knowledge of plants would be a "nice to have" but is not essential to the role, however, excellent customer service and a high standard of visual merchandising is required as is previous retail management experience.

You will be working in our seasonal department across the Centre being involved with planning and building all our seasonal changes. Setting up for Christmas.

What we offer

Benefits include onsite car parking and staff discount for our Garden Centres and Restaurants as well as the Woodthorpe Leisure Park.

Must have at least 2 yrs experience at Department Manager level or higher within a retail setting.

Duties include

• Managing Garden Centre people resources
• Forward planning of work schedule
• Daily resource management to support effective customer service requirements
• Deployment of the team to deliver excellent shop floor standards
• Managing cash/till operations
• Ordering
• Operational Audit for compliance in those areas
• Key holder responsibilities to assist with opening and closing of the centres

Applications close - Wednesday 17th June 2026