1995-2017
From humble beginnings the business has flourished. Originally a landscaping business, Grant Higgins and partner Kenneth MacRae started landscaping the gardens of Moray plus many in Aberdeenshire specialising in ponds prior to Threaplands forming in 1995 when Kenneth had left the business and Grant's brother Scott joined. Due to customer demand, alongside the landscaping, plants started being grown on site and finally the plant nursery was born where homegrown plants were sold directly to customers from what is now the old garden centre site.
It was a long-standing ambition of the directors to expand the business from the small nursery to become a shopping destination in Moray. In 2014 Ben Laing joined the business as landscaping supervisor and this ambition started growing pace with it finally becoming realistically achievable. November 2018 and the dream became a reality with the opening of the first custom built garden centre in Moray.
2018-2022
The new eco-friendly facility is home to our expansive outdoor garden centre, indoor retail and highly popular table service restaurant. At 240 seats, the restaurant is one of the largest of its kind in Moray which leads the way in garden centre catering not only in Moray but in Scotland.
Being led by the dynamic team consisting of directors Scott Higgins, Grant Higgins & Ben Laing the new business endured biblical rain in 2019, global pandemic Coronavirus in 2020 and the economic struggles as a result of the Ukraine war in 2022. Being owned by the two families brought both resilience and the personal touch to everything with lockdown seeing a webshop built and thousands of customers receiving deliveries not only of gardening products but kitchen essentials, ready made meals and even toilet roll.
2022 saw change for Threaplands. We closed the doors on our production site with the last of the Threaplands home grown plants being sold, this was a bittersweet change. We love nurturing our plant stock and growing in Moray for Moray but commercially this exercise wasn't viable as we refocused on the core activities of Threaplands. October 2022 saw the retirement of Scott Higgins and in December the landscaping side of the business was sold to Grant Higgins who returned to his roots with sole responsibility for designing and implementing beautiful landscapes across Moray and beyond.
2023 and Beyond
Focus on quality, focus on fresh, focus on sustainable business for the future. 2023 brought new focus to Threaplands as we grow the core values of the business. In August 2023 the Laing family purchased the remaining shares in Threaplands Garden Centre, Neil Laing (Ben's father), Ben Laing and Ben's daughter Olivia Laing are pictured to the left.
We are what we say on the tin- Quality scratch made meals using Scottish ingredients, local where possible and serving them to you in our custom built table service restaurant.