Tales of the Urban Explorer: Holland Gardening Centre

When the virus eventually disappears I figure that we may have a few Garden centers that will go bust. It has been all over the news about canceled orders and rotting plants.

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...'the image above is from February 2015. Just 5 years ago'...

They are plentiful in the UK, and even before the current crisis hit, there appears to be several hanging about asking to be explored.

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I was tipped off by a YouTuber about Holland Gardening Center. He told me not to expect much so I made it a double trip with SpingSide Mills being the other one (not written yet).

Finding it was not easy as it resides on a new road and my old car's SatNav data only reaches up until 2012.

I came across it purely by chance after heading to the general location with only a road name written down.

The grounds looked quite sealed up, but once again my informant had generously revealed an access point and it was not difficult to find.

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This Asda delivery van man seemed content on having a snooze right outside the front gate. Fortunately, that was not the way in.

The garden center was subject to an arson attack in 2018, and the report here says it will need to be demolished. There seems to be little evidence that this is underway.

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I would fully expect a derelict garden center to have plenty of plants and weeds and was not disappointed.

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They did keep catching me and being face height can sting if you're not careful.

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What I would call the previous outside area was completely gone. The metal roofing remained along with remnants of what may have been once plants.

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The indoor area had fared a little better, but even there many parts of the roof had suffered from what I would guess some kind of inferno.

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…'even during an intense fire, some of the woodwork always seems to survive'…

I would hazard a guess at the offices being in this very dark corridor. As I didn't have my big light or even headlamp, I avoid going down here.

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It was so black I couldn’t see a damn thing, and the blackened walls were hardly helping.

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What was this overturned tree; something that once had a sellable price or a big weed that has gone mad?

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The back area was considerable is size but yielded little of interest. Anything metal had rusted badly as you can see.

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There were plenty of plant pots, of all sizes.

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Close to the bottom was a small lake with a tarpaulin covering the edges; did they sell live fish once?

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The daffodils were just sprouting and this was about the closet to thing to life I saw in the Holland Gardening Center.

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…'you do have to watch where you walk, standing on this would be a huge ouch affair'…

This portacabin may have escaped the fire but not the vandals.

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Google Maps showed a closed-down school next to the Holland Gardening Center, but on inspection, it had been demolished. Bummer.

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On exiting, I couldn't help but notice what looked like a working Security system. Is there really anything worth securing in this wreck of a place?

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I walked in full view of the cameras and gave them a goodbye wave. I would think the owners have stopped paying for their services some time ago.

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dude what a cool yet creepy place I must say. It looks like a hurricane came over and life grew back on it afterwards..really nice actually for a walk through!

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They all have me on tenterhooks when I solo them. What put me on edge here was that van. It wasn't there when I went in, and being green (the colour of a cop van), I could see it through all the brambles (while inside) and thought it was a bust!

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Those places don't look built to last generally. You could well have a load more abandoned businesses to explore when 'all this' is over. Did you not stock up on plant pots?

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You could well have a load more abandoned businesses to explore when 'all this' is over.

No doubt, it's been crossing my mind. I go for photography, some are better than others but a recently abandoned business may not have a sufficient level of creepiness inside for anything photogenic.

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Decay is more photogenic ;)

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Plant pot Heaven!

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Sad to see somebody's dream go up in smoke like that my friend.
Looks like it was once a flourishing center.
This virus is going to kill many more businesses.
Well done with the shots.

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It is sad, looking at that first scene and then at what it is now. Dumb arsonist again wrecking peoples lives,

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Oh yeah, I looked at the comparison.
From ashes to ashes as they say!

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It looks like this could be the future of the UK - I don't think it's just garden centres that are rotting. 😢

I'm still trying to get to grips with this wonderful new platform. I seem to have been locked out of Hivesigner since this afternoon - it won't recognize any of my passwords, the same ones I always use. I can log out and log in again, but I can't post or transfer Hive. Do you know if there's a community forum or Discord group where people can discuss these problems and get advice?

I've even failed in doing a search to see if anyone has had the same problem. I just seem to be locked out of the platform - I can see posts, but not interact.

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If you are using Chrome or Brave, you would be better using KeyChain. Once it's configured it takes all your password woe's away.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hive-keychain/jcacnejopjdphbnjgfaaobbfafkihpep

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Thanks @slobberchops. I've added it to Chrome so fingers crossed... Apologies for adding my cry for help to your comments thread! I was struggling with this last night till the early hours 😭

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Just add your active and posting key to it and then most issues will be gone. There's still the odd dapp that doesn't use it but most do.

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Urgh. Doesn't work. Apparently Google doesn't support Chrome extensions on Android. It works on my Mac devices, but they don't have sufficient memory to run Peakd. It will have to wait until I upgrade the RAM on them I think - that's the root of most of my technology issues.

I can log into Peakd using Hivesigner, and I think I can post now, but when I try to transfer a small amount of Hive, Hivesigner pops up, and suddenly my Keystore password no longer works, and neither do any of my log in keys.

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Oh that pungi would mess up your day for sure! Seems like they could make some cash from selling all that scrap metal.

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The scrappers have probably already raided it. They are very much on the ball.

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It’s always gloomy after a fire, I hate the stench. Seems to cling to your clothes for ages

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I couldn't smell it here, but some places I can. After 2 years it gets a little less pungent.

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I realize this was helped along by fire, but it's still fascinating to see how quickly things decay when humans are no longer tending to them. Looks like it would be a great movie set for some kind of apocalyptic/end-of-days/zombie film!

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(Edited)

Many places I visit could be the scene of those movies. You do get used to it after a while.

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Dang, that is pretty sad. I can't believe that was just five years ago. We have some places like this that have gone out of business in the past couple of years. Ours get turned into marijuana dispensaries though. They have been buying out old buildings all over the place and renovating them. It is pretty crazy!

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It is sad, the houses make me sadder still, left to rot away with the contents intact. @grindle sees more of these than me. Only once I have seen one used as a Cannabis farm, it does happen.

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They are my favourite buildings, so much treasure and history.

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That was an adventure @slobberchops. A few of the photos were really cool. Nice of you to have posted here. I wonder if they caught the arsonist? I'm sure there's a story behind the crime that's waiting to be told... :)

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I do wonder, the story tells nothing else other than it was burnt down. It happens frequently and the criminals tend to get away with it.

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I'm always fascinated by derelict places like this, to think it once was a hub of activity and ended up like this is just so sad!
Your photographs are wonderful, they look like they're from a scifi movie scene!

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