Haskins Garden Centre in East Dorset

Food is delicious, especially the cakes as well as being very generous sizes! The staff are very welcoming and helpful. They are constantly cleaning tables and makeing sure everything is ok while offering their help, Nic especially pays close attention to her customers and their needs, she is quick to help and reassure, my daughter dropped a glass and Nic was there straight away making sure everyone was ok and cleaning up the glass while reassuring us it wasn't a problem, she is very friendly and approachable.

Lovely place to have lunch n browse Cant leave without buying something!

Went with a friend for lunch, we had the carvey option. My goodness what value for money and delicious. Definitely 5 star.

Love Haskins! Food is delicious and portion sizes are very generous. The staff are amazing. Especially Nic.She pays close attention to customers and makes us feel very welcome.She even got us a bigger plate of beans when my little niece wanted some.The staff are always working hard and always have smiles on their faces.I come here every week with my family as we love it so much. We love having a shop around after eating.... especially at Christmas time as the lights are amazing!

Expensive but good for Xmas ideas

What a lovely garden centre! As soon as you walk in, you are faced with a wonderful Christmas display! Definitely recommend visiting just to see this. The rest of the centre has so much variety with lots of plants (obviously), toys, home ware, books, clothes, gifts and more. The cafe was amazing! Loads of choice, a massive cake counter, Costa Coffee and a large variety of cold and hot food. The toilets were really clean and modern too. This garden centre is a bit on the pricey side but that being said, you get what you pay for, and this garden centre is really well maintained, plenty of staff, and feels bright and welcoming. The Hobby Craft next door is very handy too and a very very short walk from the garden centre :)

I have been visiting this Garden Centre for nearly twenty years, and every visit is so enjoyable. The outdoor area is very spacious and full of lots of palm trees and flowers to admire. Also a wonderful selection of garden statues to look at, with something to suit all tastes and budgets. The indoor shop has so much to look at and is ideal for choosing a gift for someone. The Christmas display here is truly out of this world, the best I have ever seen, and great for children as well as all ages. The restaurant has recently had a full refurbishment and looks amazing. It can get quite busy on Saturdays, but still possible to find a seat, as the area is so huge. I always order the large latte here, as the mug they serve it in is huge, therefore reasonable value for money. Good variety of cakes to suit most tastes, and the rectangular shaped chocolate slice is amazing, very rich and luxurious, and therefore reasonable value for money. One of the restaurant team members, called Nic, is without a doubt, one of the loveliest people I have ever come across. She is incredibly friendly and welcoming, and always makes our visit such an enjoyable one.

Called in today for coffee and 1 packet of jammy dodgers 2 biscuits, amazed at the price £2.10 , in marks and spencer full packet of biscuits £ 1 .

It's such a lovely place to wander about it. The Christmas displays are up, and it's such a joy to walk around. To top off, the food is always delicious at the cafe. Staff friendly and always willing to help.

Great cafe and very well stocked garden centre

Lovely Christmas display. Great outdoor seating area, where we could take the dogs while we had coffee

Nicely laid out. Very clean toilets. The restaurant was full, so unable to get food, but good excuse to return. Friendly helpful and knowledgeable staff.

One of my happy places. Especially at Christmas

Had plenty in stocks and very good quality

Excellent stock of plants but full of Chinese tat at the moment, Christmas goods.

Was great to visit. I've never seen such a big garden centre cafe

The most over priced garden centre I have been to. Full of pensioners having extremely over priced teas,forget the garden plants.

Delicious Lasagne Café is much quieter now, thank goodness… Great place for Calendars…

Very nice garden centre and cafe only issue brought a tea mug within a week handle fell off

found hair in my food how ridiculous we told the manager she said she'd send us a voucher which has been two weeks, not very nice trying to give us money to make us forget that there was a literal hair on my food!

We stopped for a quick bite in the cafe. Nice panini's and fries. It's partially self serve but the queues move quickly so even if busy you get your food quickly. Not cheap but nice food with an outdoor seating area.

We booked a high tea today The staff were amazing so friendly and helpful. So many cakes need a box to take them home . Which the gladly supplied could not tank them enough.

Lovely place to lunch but very expensive

Only go here if you want to be utterly shafted or youre a minted codger with unlimited pensions.

Large garden centre on the outskirts of Ferndown. Large selection of plants and other garden related items. The coffee shop is nice too, wide selection of cakes, meals and hot drinks. Only criticism I do have is it feels like a motorway service station, quite noisy and usually very busy, theres other garden centres locally that are a bit more intimate and relaxed.

It's disguising that they allow birds into the restaurant. The staff didn't care to remove them. Health & safety at its worst!!

A big garden centre which has a great homeware range, children's toys range, trinkets and jewellery, cards, gift wrap and fabulous garden indoor and outdoor range of plants and water features. You can also buy aggregate, soil, bark, trellises and ceramic pots here. The staff are really friendly and helpful. There is also a really large restaurant here which is very well presented, with lots of different areas to sit with family, friends, work colleagues - or, just to come by yourself and have a cuppa is a good experience too. The food, hot and cold, is also very tasty, with a nice, varied range for all tastes. A top tip - Haskins start to have their late night opening towards Christmas around November time onwards - bring the little ones to enjoy their shop displays and large animated figures - they will have a lovely time!

Very enjoyable afternoon as always.

Good selection of things to look around. We had a lovely meal, it was very filling and very tasty. The service was good. Very reasonably priced.

A wonderful selection of plants, clothing outlets, books, puzzles, gifts, homeware & a fabulous restaurant for excellent coffee, teas & meals & delicious cakes, scones & tasty treats!

Had a Rum baba or what was meant to be for a treat.Well this was not a Rum baba as I know.It was soaked not in Rum sryup but more like a sugar syrup no taste of Rum and should have been a yeast dough....more like a sponge.Very dissapointed

Excellent Garden centre with loads of plants and super restaurant

Nice garden center but getting quite expensive. The restaurant is fantastic but very busy

Very good garden centre with good range of plants and garden equipment. Outside area large portion is covered. No lawnmowers or heavy garden machinery. Prices are higher than some but quality good. Some fashion clothes, pet equipment also sold as well as kitchen ware ornaments etc. Visited on 3rd September to find large area of indoor area screened off to prepare for Christmas decorations, seems to get earlier every year.

Good choice of breakfast items, which you can pick yourself, not the cheapest place but good quality

Nice place to wonder around and browse, bought some Hawkstone beers. Cream tea was very nice too.

Eaten here many times but on this occasion the food was very poor

Lovely choice of plants and ornaments. The self-service Cafe has a wide selection of food. Desserts absolutely delicious.

Foods nice but just full of snobby people buying overpriced plants and tat

Plants and garden furniture expensive but cafe surprisingly reasonable. Great soup and cakes. Sandwiches looked amazing but saved them for next time

Excellent choice of foods, but the garden centre part really good, though a bit pricey.

Nice food , good coffee also a clean and tidy

Fantastic cafe/restaurant. Goat cheese salad was nicely presented, delicious, healthy and good value too. Nice outside seating, loads of seating space. Great variety of everything they sell, food clothes, plants, garden, beer/cider. My family like it here, so do I now.

Large garden centre which also sells gifts and clothing. Excellent cafe. Not the cheapest garden centre in the area and they don't seem to have a loyalty scheme. Plenty of choice though.

Great Garden centre. Expensive stuff and garden furniture.

Very good for all sorts of plants furniture

Excellent café with plenty of choice. The food was delicious and not over priced. It was very busy for midweek. I had homemade mushroom soup with a chunk of olive bread. Excellent taste and plenty of soup.

Staff were very helpful and took time to help us finding what we needed

Wonderful place, nice food, drinks and plants, always an enjoyable experience.

what a n8ce place to go on your day off

Nice garden centre. However don't visit here if you have a dog and its raining as dog owners won't be able to have a coffee/tea/cake as the terrace is uncovered unlike thier plants. We were going to purchase a few items but as we were unable to have refreshments we left. We noticed a few pet owners doing the same. Perhaps the management might like to consider partially covering it.

The scone & coffee was great but I wouldnt have liked to have been the people behind us in the queue waiting with their hot food for drinks & pay. It took so long theirs would have got cold.

Met up with new friends & family

went for a coffee and scone when passing great

Nice setting with plenty of space but why is the food so bad. I eat out a lot and I would love to enjoy a meal at Haskins.They try hard but just can’t seem to get it right. Every now and again I think I will give them another try, ever hopeful. This time I had a toasted sandwich of turkey, bacon and goats cheese sounded nice but the bacon was poor quality, the turkey was dry and there was one tiny piece of goats cheese. Expensive and very disappointing. I live locally but will not waste my money again. You can get a similar toasted sandwich at The Hiker Cafe, Hengistbury Head and it is amazing with lots if goats cheese. It makes me so cross when Haskins charges a premium for their toasted sandwiches, salads etc and they are crap with some weird combinations.

Expensive, but very nice and very well made product's. Everything you would need, is there, but to be fair, I do love to see what other businesses have on offer 🤷... Good food as well, so if you plan to shop. This, Centre is a nice, place to go and do your gardening. 🐝♥️🎉

14 of us met in the restaurant. We had pre-booked a table and we had loads of time to chat and eat lunch. My quiche and salad was home made and a unique mix of flavours in the salad Ice cream was great but rather expensive. £3.99 for 2 scoops. Staff lovely

To expensive dearest garden centre in the area

We booked afternoon tea for my elderly mum's birthday. Very impressive selection of sandwiches and cakes plus unlimited tea all served on lovely China. The staff couldn't do enough for us - frequently checking that we were OK, had everything we needed etc. Everyone working that day (25th July) was great but Nic was particularly wonderful.

Lovely garden centre with great home accessory department. Lovely restaurant serving delicious variety of cakes & scones & wonderful meals from pizza to roasts.

There's a very large and interesting catalogue of indoor and outdoor plants and I was surprised by the quality of the plants, all of them were kept well there wasn't any sign of pests or diseases in any plants, some were just freshly watered, there's this really nice 3 for 11 mini house plant offer with really interesting options! The outdoor plants option also had some really really nice plants that weren't too expensive and the café has really nice food with good portions I was surprised by how nice and big was the roast dinner!

Overpriced and ridiculously sickly cakes.

Well I arranged for an Afternoon Tea here today 23/07/24. And oh my goodness five stars isn’t enough. My family enjoyed it so very much. My mum and Auntie especially. When we arrived we were shown to our table which was laid with blue tablecloth, napkins and fine china. And the food itself was just gorgeous 🥰❤️🥰❤️ we all had enough to bring a take away box home with us too. Excellent service, excellent choice of foods and definitely value for money. We were made to feel really special and lots of people using the restaurant were impressed and made lovely comments 🥰🥰🥰

Great place to take, the old folk. For a Saturday afternoon. Loads of plants for sale. Nice restaurant as well Xxx

Went here for breakfast with work, and was really impressed by the quality and quantity and at a reasonable price thank you

Was very disappointed to find out that Haskins allow their staff to work on the showroom floor with Covid. This was on Saturday 20 July. I wasn’t going to write this review until I’d heard back from the manager following my email but I haven’t had an acknowledgement let alone an explanation. Lots of older and vulnerable people visit Haskins for plants or to meet for coffee and in my opinion, they have a duty of care to those people, and their own staff, to minimise the risk of spread. If they insist people work when they are positive with covid, put them out of the way of customers and staff. My father is in a care home and it would be disastrous if I took Covid in. Luckily I didn’t take the item the sales assistant was handing me as, due to the fact he was wearing a mask, I asked if he had covid. He confirmed he did. He was on a desk dealing directly with the public. Disgraceful! This wasn’t in the restaurant, it was on the main sales floor.

Today we tried their carvery. I have to say it was very tasty and restaurant area was kept clean with tables cleared away very quickly

Great place for garden shopping

Quite pricey for some things but lovely place and shop here often.

Probably the most extensive garden centre around East Dorset. Well worth a visit.

If you are after a lovely mooch and lunch, this is the place!

I believe it has been up graded, repairs etc. Still as good as it always is. Friendly helpful staff. Great selection of plants and other household items.

Great place highly recommended lovely place to eat aswell as the Garden centre

Met friends for lunch here. Food ok .

Always loved Haskins and the café there for food. However, unfortunately today we had the displeasure of meeting Pam (a cleaner) at the café. She has got to be one of the most rude, unempathetic and miserable person I have witnessed working in a public facing role for some time.The manager had mentioned she has had multiple other complaints about her from different people. You may want to have a think if this is someone you still want working in your café; I certainly wouldn't! Maybe if the miserable old bat spent more time doing her actual job of just cleaning rather than being rude to customers the place would be better kept.

After eating Fish & Chips on Thursday 04 July at 12 :30 I was very sick 4 hours later. This continued all night until 4PM on Friday the 05 July. Today, Monday the 8 July, I am better, but my stomach still hurts. I called Haskins and asked to speak to the general manager. The person on the phone said the manager of the restaurant would be the person to call for food poisoning. The restaurant manager was not available, but I was told She would call me back. This never happened. What awful service.

absolutely lovely place food great but costa staff need re training I got a cold milk with squirty cream when asked for frappe!!!!

superb place! lots of parking even on a Sunday lunchtime, Great choice of food with a lovely veggie roast available, and prompt service in the restaurant. the garden centre itself is lovely, we spent 2 hours just browsing the plants and other goodies!

Awesome garden centre. Lush plants, laid out so you can easily find what you're looking for. Plenty of staff in every area if you need assistance. A customer service desk inside entrance. Wonderful indoor plant section with beautiful established bonsais and orchids galore. A huge cafe restaurant with Costa coffee and outside tables. Well behaved dogs allowed. Toilets amazing. I've never been to a garden centre like it! The only slight gripe I have is there could be more vegan options in the cafe, as in cakes and hot food. Highly recommend a visit to Haskins.

This is a lovely looking garden center however the food shocking. I was so sick after the Eggs Benedict. Served cold and yes I should have said something but didn’t want to upset anyone.

Lot of choice and items reasonably priced. Large restaurant and very clean.

Excellent range of items both indoor and out, everything from Barbecues and Kitchenware to Outdoor Plants and Bird Feeders and much inbetween. A little overpriced. Absolutely let down by the cafe though - very high price for very average food, also had run out of cutlery during lunchtime (!), had to share a teaspoon with two of my companions!

Excelent garden center with a little bit of everything and after you shop whatever u need and whatever u don't need you can visit the lovely restaurant where the problem will be choosing one of the tasty cakes...

This place is HUGE and has a large array of garden furniture, cookware, the usual overpriced food & clothing along with a large café. Slightly disappointing that the size of the building doesn’t reflect the offering of actual plants at this garden centre! Meagre offering of houseplants and pots etc. It could quite easily double the amount of plant stock and still have room for all the other stuff!

Good sized garden center with plenty of plants and a gift shop and cafe. Started our visit by having a light lunch but the prices were some of the highest I have seen in any cafe for a long time. Decided on soup which was good, although service was very slow. After lunch, set off in search of plants, having a few in mind we were looking for. After searching for a while for one type, we asked an employee who just waved a hand in a direction quite a long way from where we were. Headed over there and it took us ages to find what we needed. Might have been more helpful if the staff member had walked us over, or at least closer to what we were looking for. Checkout lines were long and quite disorganized with staff members shouting across for the next customer but many not hearing/noticing. Visited on a Sunday, but would probably try a week day in future in the hopes it may be less busy.

I was recommended to go here and not disappointed

the banana cake was so sweet that I felt unwell for the rest of the day.. Had to run to the bathroom a few times. I don’t think i ever had a cake as sugary as that one.

Of late the plants have often been very dry particularly today when zI bought some mint very drooping and very dry zi asked for a reduced price but was declined .....poor showI expect better of you surely you have enough staff to at least water them

Brilliant service, exchanged 2 rhododendrons for us after they died 1 year after buying them, excellent service

Great place to visit. Food, cakes and coffee perfect.

I think people leaving 5 stars are just used to being served tasteless food. The food wasn’t even cooked properly; the green beans were fully crunchy, potatoes were dry and the portions are too small for the price. The beef was dry/overcooked. The cakes very bland and tasteless for again the price. One chef was acting snub towards customers as if he didn’t want to be there. Won’t come here again that’s for sure

Awful, overpriced food. £24 for a tiny plate of food that dad couldn't even cut!

Popped in for lunch. Great selection and very friendly staff

Lovely healthy bedding plants at affordable prices

Large selection of both plants and non-plant goods for outdoor living. Not cheap though.

Helpful staff good layout everything you want and easy to find

Excellent service in cafe and shop

Went in for lunch, absolutely manic so came back out again

Well laid out centre with many plant varieties. Restaurant serving snacks a main meals. Plenty of car parking.

just the best garden center in the area... Lots of variety, great quality. Slightly more expensive than your normal garden centre but you get what you pay for...