Compare garden centres in New Zealand at Canstar Blue. Kings Plant Barn, Palmers and Oderings Garden Centre were compared on Overall Satisfaction, Range of Brands, Range of Products, Service & Advice and Value for Money.
Green-fingered Kiwis rate Kings Plant Barn the nation’s best garden centres for the second year in a row, and the winner of Canstar Blue’s Most Satisfied Customers | Garden Centres Award 2025.
Our review compares garden centres on customer satisfaction, so you can discover what other Kiwis think about our compared garden centres before you head off shopping for garden supplies. Think of it like asking hundreds of your closest friends and family which garden centre chain they think is best!
Canstar Blue surveyed 866 Kiwis who had made a purchase at a garden centre over the past 12 months for their feedback on their customer experience.
Respondents rate their satisfaction with their garden centre from zero to ten, where zero is extremely dissatisfied and ten is extremely satisfied. Brand satisfaction was rated by respondents on the following criteria:
The winning brand is the one that receives the highest Overall Satisfaction rating once all the scores from the Overall Satisfaction criteria are combined and averaged.
Brands must have received at least 30 responses to be included, so not all brands available in the market have been compared in this survey. The brands rated in this survey are listed below in order of best overall satisfaction.
Find more information on our Most Satisfied Customer methodology.
Kings Plant Barn takes home Canstar Blue’s Most Satisfied Customers | Garden Centres Award on the back of a perfect set of ratings from its very satisfied customers across all our award categories, including Value for Money, Service and Advice and Overall Satisfaction.
This is the second year in a row that the garden centre brand has been rated the nation’s best, a great achievement that reflects the levels of value and service that Kings Plant Barn delivers to its customers.
Kings Plant Barn is an Auckland-based chain of garden centres. It operates seven stores across the city that offer a wide range of plants and gardening essentials.
Kings Plant Barn publishes a seasonal Scoop magazine, featuring growing hints and tips. And for in-store visitors, each Kings Plant Barn has a resident Plant Doctor. Visible due to their red Plant Doctor t-shirts, they’re available to offer their expert advice on all your plant and gardening queries.
Second on our award table, Palmers is highly rated by its garden centre customers, who award it a great set of 4- and 5-Star ratings.
Palmers earns top 5-Star ratings for Value for Money and Service & Advice, plus 4-Star ratings across our other categories, including Value for Money.
Palmers began as a nursery in 1912, and entered the garden retail market in 1958. Still proudly Kiwi owned and operated, Palmers has 12 locations across the North Island.
Palmers sells a wide range of plants, gardening products and outdoor living equipment. It has its own loyalty scheme and posts a wide range of how-to guides on its website.
It also publishes its Edibles magazine, which is dedicated to advice on growing fresh produce.
Rounding out this year’s Garden Centres Award table, Oderings places third with a 4-Star Overall Satisfaction rating, but still has a great set of reviews from its customers, identical to those achieved by Palmers: a mix of 4- and 5-Star ratings.
Boasting a history spanning 94 years, Oderings Garden Centres have become an integral part of New Zealand’s landscape-design environment. Oderings operates seven stores nationwide: five stores in Christchurch, and two in the North Island.
Oderings has its own Gardeners Club loyalty program that offers exclusive deals and discounts. And it publishes its own bi-yearly magazine, Live and Grow, that you can read online.
Oderings also operates a landscaping service in Christchurch.
What do you look for in a garden centre? Perhaps it’s just a great cafe! In this year’s awards survey, a third of respondents (33%) say the most important factor for them is Value for Money.
However, close behind, Range of Products is the biggest driver of satisfaction for 31% of garden centre customers. This is supported by the fact that 58% of our consumers also say they’re inspired by their visits to garden centres.
And a quarter of our survey respondents cite Service and Advice all-important, which is understandable. For while choosing a pot or bag of compost is a simple decision, deciding on the best plant for a certain spot in your garden can be difficult if your fingers don’t have a verdant tinge to them.
Here is the full rundown of what the garden centres consumers in our survey say are the main things they consider when rating the garden centres they visit:
About the author of this pageBruce Pitchers is Canstar NZ’s Content Manager. An experienced finance reporter, he has three decades’ experience as a journalist and has worked for major media companies in Australia, the UK and NZ, including ACP, Are Media, Bauer Media Group, Fairfax, Pacific Magazines, News Corp and TVNZ. As a freelancer, he has worked for The Australian Financial Review, the NZ Financial Markets Authority and major banks and investment companies on both sides of the Tasman.
In his role at Canstar, he has been a regular commentator in the NZ media, including on the Driven, Stuff and One Roof websites, the NZ Herald, Radio NZ, and Newstalk ZB.
Away from Canstar, Bruce creates puzzles for magazines and newspapers, including Woman’s Day and New Idea. He is also the co-author of the murder-mystery book 5 Minute Murder.
Inspired by visiting garden centres: 58%
Have relied on the advice of garden centre staff: 54%
Canstar Blue surveyed 2501 New Zealand consumers across a range of categories to measure and track customer satisfaction, via ISO 26362 accredited research panels managed by PureProfile. The outcomes reported are the results from respondents who had visited and made a purchase at a garden centre in the past 12 months. In this case, 866 New Zealanders. Brands must have received at least 30 responses to be included. Results are comparative and it should be noted that brands receiving three stars have still achieved a satisfaction measure of at least six out of 10. Not all brands available in the market have been compared in this survey. The ratings table is first sorted by star ratings and then by mean overall satisfaction. A rated brand may receive a ‘N/A’ (Not Applicable) rating if it does not receive the minimum number of responses for that criterion.
The past winner from Canstar Blue’s Garden Centre ratings:
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