After a long few months for businesses in Fermanagh, Monday, April 12 must have felt a bit like the excitement of Christmas morning as some readied themselves to reopen their doors and let customers in.

There would have been uncertainty and apprehension about how things were going to look after such a long time closed up, and if the customers would ‘talk with their feet’ and visit.

For garden centres, car sales, caravan and motorhome sales, car washes and agricultural machinery retailers, Monday was the first step to recovery after Northern Ireland continues to make its way out of the Covid-19 lockdown.

With messaging also changing to ‘Stay local’ and non-essential retail click-and-collect resuming, footfall in towns and villages across the county should increase in the coming weeks.

For Scott Robinson, the owner of Craigville Garden Centre in Enniskillen, it was a relief to see people back walking through the centre.

“Its been a long 10-11 weeks but the relief is just that we are open. You never realised how much people missed the centre.

“When we saw the customers flowing in, it has been terrific, and thankfully the weather has been decent.”

Steady flow

The garden centre on the Sligo Road has seen a steady flow since the gates opened on Monday and Scott paid tribute to his employees who kept the place in shape while it was closed.

“They are good staff and treat it like their own. We are delighted to have them back – they are the ones kept place right during the closure.”

While it is good to be back open, Scott does admit there is some frustration at how garden centres were forced to close for so long, when other ways of selling flowers were left to operate as normally.

“Everybody was saying the same thing: ‘How come garden centres in Northern Ireland are closed?’ We can’t understand it either, and we never got an answer to that question.

“That hurt when other businesses were selling our plants, but yet that was okay, but we weren’t allowed to be open as an outdoor centre, [despite] the size that we are,” Scott said.

But that is all in the past now and Scott and his team are looking to the future to make up for lost time and to make sure their customer base are provided with the service they deserve.

“It’s not going to make up for the months that we were closed, but at least we are open at the right time.

“If it went on much longer there would have been a lot of financial problems.

“It’s a worry – are we losing customers during the closure? Thankfully our customer base is very good and loyal.”

And with the garden centre open, Scott is waiting on news now of when his flower shop in the town centre will get the date for reopening.

Positive vibe

For now, there is a positive vibe around Craigville as staff and customers reacquaint themselves.

Scott hopes that this positivity will help things get back to normal that bit quicker, and the road out of lockdown continues to travel in the right direction.

“There’s a positive vibe about with everywhere being open. People forget very quickly, and in a few week’s time people will forget we were ever closed,” he added.