Each year, the Garden Centers of America (GCA) recognizes independent garden centers for their store restroom designs with the GCA Best Garden Center Bathroom Awards. A panel judges the entries on the bathroom’s creativity and comfort to the customer’s overall shopping experience.
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Garden Centers Of America Best Bathroom Awards
This year’s sixth annual Garden Centers Of America Best Bathroom Awards were unveiled at the IGC Show in Chicago on Aug 16-18.
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Fiddleheads Garden Center, Dalton, GA
These modern-day “outhouses” take customers back in time with rusted tin wainscoting, barn wood trim, and heavy, handmade barn wood-constructed doors. Papering the walls are pages from Sears and Roebuck catalogs dating back to 1902, picturing tools, clothing, and guns in the men’s room, and dresses, silverware, and musical instruments in the women’s room.
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Fiddleheads Garden Center, Dalton, GA
An ammunition canister, pine cone sprays, fiddleheads, a shoe mold shelf, and a metal star help theme the men’s room. Rustic metal flowers, interior pottery, tin containers with houseplants, and signs with store information are found in the women’s room. Corn cobs are used throughout both bathrooms, lining the mirrors and dispensing toilet paper. Chamber pots are repurposed as trash bins, as Edison light bulbs complete the throwback look.
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Gold Award: Larson’s Garden Center, Burlington, CT
Larson’s fourth-generation owners remodeled the store’s bathrooms with a vision of making them vibrant and sexy. In the first bathroom, white crown moldings accentuate the European bowl sink against bold charcoal and red elements. Flower mosaics in the flooring and a tree painted on the wall bring the outdoors in.
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Gold Award: Larson’s Garden Center, Burlington, CT
In the second bathroom, rich chocolate walls offset the wood-grain floor, with a marble mosaic as a focal point underfoot. A large antique-style clock helps tie it all together.
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Silver Award: Lammscapes/Lamm Gardens, Jackson, WI
Bold colors in unexpected combinations delight customers as they walk into these single-user men’s and women’s restrooms. All of the artwork and garden decor on display are for sale. Repurposed props, including a bright-pink painted sewing table in the ladies’ room, create a farmhouse chic look.
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Silver Award: Van Atta’s Greenhouse & Flower Shop, Haslett, MI
Ideas for customers’ homes flow freely throughout Van Atta’s, including in the bathroom, where everything is for sale — from the one-of-a-kind handmade silk and dried floral arrangements, to the soaps and lotions, to the decor on the walls.
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Merit Award: Backbone Valley Nursery, Marble Falls, TX
Themed to the store’s extensive collection of orchids, the bathroom showcases a super-sized, hand-painted mural that conveys a passion for the plant.
As part of the bathroom’s update, the owners painted the original 1972 wood paneling in a soft gray and upgraded the rusty sink to a modern vanity. A tree with birds painted on the wall completes the look.
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MERIT AWARD: Water Flow Productions, Purvis, MS
Bright-yellow walls bring out the yellow and gold accents in the newly framed mirror and marble countertop. The faith-themed artwork creatively conceals a breaker box.
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Garden Centers Of America Best Bathroom Awards
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Fiddleheads Garden Center, Dalton, GA
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Fiddleheads Garden Center, Dalton, GA
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Gold Award: Larson’s Garden Center, Burlington, CT
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Gold Award: Larson’s Garden Center, Burlington, CT
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Silver Award: Lammscapes/Lamm Gardens, Jackson, WI
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Silver Award: Van Atta’s Greenhouse & Flower Shop, Haslett, MI
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Merit Award: Backbone Valley Nursery, Marble Falls, TX
This year’s sixth annual honors, with the winners indicated in the above photo gallery, were unveiled at the IGC Show in Chicago on Aug 16-18. The winners of the Gold Award — Fiddleheads Garden Center and Larson’s Garden Center — receive plaques and a complimentary registration for the 2017 GCA Summer Tour in Virginia Beach/Norfolk, VA. Other recognitions include two Silver Awards and three Merit Awards.
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015Garden Centers Of America Names 2016 Best Bathroom Award Winners
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Brian Sparks is senior editor of Greenhouse Grower and editor of Greenhouse Grower Technology. See all author stories here.
September 19, 2016 
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