Mother’s Day afternoon tea

Many garden centres celebrate Mother’s Day with the traditional afternoon tea. The invention of afternoon tea is attributed to the seventh Duchess of Bedford, Anna Maria Russell sometime around 1840.

She was one of Queen Victoria’s ladies-in-waiting and requested that some tea, bread and butter and cake, was brought to her room in the late afternoon, and this fashionable custom soon gained popularity across the country.

British tea-drinking goes back a couple of hundred years, having first been popularised in England by King Charles II and his Portuguese wife, Catherine de Braganza in the 1600s.

The initial imports were costly and heavily taxed so only the very wealthy could afford it. But by the Victorian era, tea drinking was enjoyed by everyone. To this day, we associate it with fine porcelain and decorative teapots.

Many garden centres are going beyond offering a curated selection of Mother’s Day gifts and organising an afternoon tea experience, with a selection of sandwiches, freshly baked scones, and cakes. 

Some add a glass of bubbly while others offer a complimentary plant gift for the mother to take home. Millbrook Gravesend is organising a different event for Mother’s Day, a seasonal workshop where customers can create a beautiful Trug Basket with a Mother’s Day tag and ribbon bow.

What are you doing to promote your business and further engage with your customers on this special occasion? Check out the most popular afternoon tea experiences in UK garden centres based on Google results. You can get ideas about what to offer and price range variations for this particular type of event.

TOP 5 Mother’s Day Afternoon Teas

1. Cherry Lane Garden Centres

2. Ruxley Manor

 3. Wentworth Garden centre

4. Coletta & Tyson Nurseries and Garden centre

5. Langlands Garden centre

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