Skewes Nursery, Cornwall plans to build cafe and shop

Colin Warne, owner of Warnes Plants, said things “just went berserk” after he posted the details of application to build a café in the grounds of Skewes Nursey to provide indoor sales, refreshments, and toilets for customers on Facebook.

It also includes improvements to the parking facilities with provision of cycle parking, electric charging, and disability spaces.

The old poly tunnels on the site have now been cleared to make way for new ones (Image: Skewes Nursery)

Mr Warne told the Packet: “It’s just absolutely amazing, it’s fantastic. When I put the drawings up [on Facebook] I couldn’t keep up with answering all the comments, it just went berserk.

“Just showing what a good following we’ve got. Now got a lot of followers from The Kitchen Garden Café also.”

An artist's impression of the proposed inside of the building (Image: Skewes Nursery)

Skewes Nursery is a well-established local business located approximately 2km outside Praze-an-Beeble on the B3303 between Camborne and Helston.

Mr Warne started there after his business partner and driving force behind the garden centre, Kevin Yeomans, suggested the overgrown poly tunnels there would make an ideal site for a garden centre.

With the agreement of the owner they cleared the site and cleaned up the polytunnels to create the garden centre Sales include a wide variety of plants, and garden supplies including window boxes, hanging baskets, irrigation systems, and firewood.

The proposed building (blue arrow) and the entrance to re-located carpark (orange arrow) (Image: Skewes Nursery)

However disaster struck when Covid closed down the business almost immediately. However after contacting his MP he found he could still make deliveries and the business, in his words, “just went absolutely mental”.

“We were carrying out deliveries seven days a week 14 hours day, the phones were constantly ringing,” he said.

The existing business currently employs nine staff including two part time. Leading from this proposal there will be an increase to 25 members of staff.

An aerial view of the proposed outside dining area (Image: Skewes Nursery)

The proposed design of the building is formed from a standard steel frame agricultural style, and will be timber clad, with a grey profile steel roof, measuring 21m by 7m, and 3.8m high.

In total, the proposal will provide at least 12 cycle spaces, five electric charging spaces, three accessible spaces, and 32 car spaces.

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A large portion of the site will be dedicated green space serving as habitats for local flora and fauna.

Since the planning was put in the site has been cleared of the old poly-tunnels and levelled ready to mark out new ones.

Another view of the proposed outside eating area (Image: Skewes Nursery)

“The Poly tunnels were getting dangerous they needed to come down,” said Mr Warne. “We asked the owner who said ‘Do what you like’. We then asked if we could put a café up. First it was a no then an Airstream caravan with few seats, went from there to shipping containers. I said to Barry [the owner of the site] ‘Why can’t we have a building?’ So he said you might as well do the poly-tunnels as well.

”No work has started on the café yet, we’ve just taken down the poly tunnels and are replacing like for like.”

As well as the garden centre, Mr Warne also, a landscaping business called K C Warne Services Ltd and a kiln dried firewood company called Arbor Firewood.