This post is actually only meant for people in and around Grenoble that are new in town and are trying to find interesting garden centres. If you don’t fit this category you can read on, but you probably won’t find it very informative.

I’ve been trying to find a few specific things that we couldn’t find in more regular garden centres in town like Botanic or home depot stores like Leroy-Merlin. A big bale of straw for the strawberries was one of those things that I couldn’t find. I could find hay (for rabbits), but couldn’t find straw. Also some things are quite expensive in above mentioned Botanic.

saturday groceries

This Saturday we decided to drive to two garden centres that we had seen on the side of the road while we were driving to other destinations. We found and bought a bale of straw, asparagus roots (a bit late, but much cheaper than in Botanic), a few special eggplant plants, a few special tomatoes (because I obviously think that 70+ tomato plants aren’t enough), a bonbonne (to make liquor), some paprika plants (because I failed to grow enough from seeds), huge amounts of plastic labels, celeriac plants, and some other flowering plants and seeds. If I hadn’t sown out so many veggies already we could have bought much more.

Both garden centres that we visited were great. They were both specialised in different things, as they are situated very close to each other one in Voreppe and the other one in Moirans. They seemed to be family owned, especially the first one that we visited. It was build around a privately owned house.

garden centre grenoble verneinThe first one we visited is called Vernein. It’s a garden centre that is mostly focused on plants. Flower plants, vegetable plants, fruit trees, really anything. They have a wide selection of everything and you can find some special things in their range of products. On a grey day like this last Saturday it’s really a nice place to go to and inhale some of the colours. I also instantly go a bit crazy when I see these huge amounts of tomato seedlings. Unfortunately, as said, I already have too many tomatoes this year again. I only allowed myself to buy two tomato plants. They were only 1 euro per plant btw, so very affordable!

tomato seedlings

paprika seedlings

 

garden centre grenoble hanging basket

hanging baskets

 

fruit trees

garden centre grenoble

garden centre

What I loved about this garden centre was that it had so many plants and that you really walked in between their greenhouses where they were growing new plants that were going to go up for sale in a few weeks or months. You could see lines of trees lined up that you could only buy from September on for example. It was really lovely.

garden centre grenoble12

The second garden centre we visited was in Voreppe (so closer to Grenoble) and it was called Gamm vert. It was less charming to look at, but on the inside it looked a bit more spacious and therefore had much more to offer on the supply side of things. You could find many wine making supplies and jam making necessities. They also had many supplies for animals around the house and therefore they also had straw! Hallelujah! They had compensated the lack of plants with huge amounts of seeds. So that balanced things out nicely.

If you are new in Grenoble and are looking to find some smaller garden centres I can advise you these two that are just outside of town and definitely worth the ride depending on what you need. For plants: go to the first one! For supplies: go to the second one. Also mind the typical french lunch breaks. We didn’t and therefore had to drive up twice.

wine supplies

compote supplies