The current Orchard Home & Garden site was once part of the vast St. Wolstan’s estate. Originally, the site housed a five acre walled Victorian orchard which provided fresh fruit and vegetables for the larger houses on the estate. Surrounded by tall, brick-built wall incorporating an ingenious system for protecting delicate plants from the frost damage, there are still hearths to be seen in the remaining original walls where fires where lit, from which hot air flowed through special air cavities, warming the bricks and radiating heat out over the orchard.

Owner and Managing Director; Gerry Dooley, originally purchased the site in 1983, it had been neglected by the previous owner whose parents had bought in in 1939. Longford-born Gerry, with a background in horticulture and a passion for plants, fell in love with the orchard, despite it being overgrown with bushes, brambles and trees. By 1987, encouraged by the success of the strawberries being grown there, Orchard began trading as a garden centre, clearing the site, leaving a gardener’s house with a conservatory, a small bungalow and a tomato house which functioned as the first shop.

As business prospered over the ensuing years, it became increasingly obvious that the first tomato house shop couldn’t meet the demands of customers so a major redevelopment, investing millions of Euro, began in 2004. That work culminated in the building of today’s computer-driven, climate-controlled glass building that echoes the Victorian glasshouses of the past, but with an entirely contemporary twist. Officially opened by Charlie Dimmock in October 2006, Orchard has developed and grown over the last 23 years from a small staff of 4 to a team of 70-strong, with specialist staff in each department.

“We have spent the last 23 years exceeding the expectations of our customers,” says Gerry Dooley, “and the same things that inspired us at the outset are as true as ever today - a great welcome, service and advice allied to quality, style and value.”!