An enjoyable evening was had by all at last week's annual GIMA awards.
The event, held on Thursday, July 18 at the Queens Hotel, Leeds, saw the cream of the garden industry take home awards for innovative products and their services to retailers. Solus celebrated a double win, bagging awards in the Outdoor Leisure, Garden Structures & Features and Pet Care, Aquatics and Wild Bird Care Products categories.
Hozelock also had a successful night, with its Flexi Spray coming top in the Growing & Planting Equipment & Sundries category, while also taking home the GIMA Sword of Excellence, awarded to the best of the winners across the eight product categories.
The evening was compered by the fantastic Giles Brandreth, who had certainly done his homework on the sector and had the audience in stitches.
Hillview Group's Boyd Douglas Davies also used the awards event as an opportunity to update the garden retail industry on Garden Re Leaf Day. He revealed, courtesy of the Flat Packed Garden Furniture Dance Troop, who amused the crowd, that the total raised by the industry this year was £116,379, bringing the amount raised over the past two years to more than £120,000.
He also announced that the date for Garden Re-leaf Day 2014 will be Friday, March 14. All the money raised has been used to build gardens and Children's Hospices with one of the most recent projects being Robin House near Glasgow.
A full list of the GIMA winners are as follows:
· Garden Care: Vitax Slug Gone Wool Pellets
· Growing & Planting Equipment: Hozelock Flexi Spray
· Garden Tools; Machinery & Implements: EP Barrus Wilkinson Sword RazorCut Comfort Pruners
· Outdoor Leisure, Garden Structures and Features: Solus Animalites solar ornaments
· Plants, Seeds & Bulbs: Javado magnetic ceramic plant pots
· Garden Landscaping: Kelkay Gardenstone Perfect Paving
· Garden Retail Related Products: Burgon & Ball Kneelo Knee Pads
· Pet Care, Aquatics & Wild Bird Care Products: Solus Fun Feeder Flower stick
· Best Point of Sale Material: Suttons Seeds Grafted Plant POS
· Best Consumer Product Packaging: Westland After Cut Even-Flo lawn spreader
· Best Marketing Communication: STV International
· GCA Supplier of the Year: Taylors Bulbs
· Gardenex Exporter of the Year: Gardman
· GIMA Sword of Excellence: Hozelock Flexi Spray