This garden centre was taken over in 2023 and now has a different name - and higher prices.read more

It was a cold miserable Sunday, we'd spent a long time forcing ourselves from under the warm duvet…read moreand once finally roused I wanted to go out and do something. Nothing crazy exciting, but something out and about nonetheless. So, I informed my boyfriend that we were going to a garden centre. It was either that or shopping, so you can guess which he chose. (I'm not really that much of a dragon, but if I hadn't we'd have mooched all our Sunday away in the house.) So. After losing our way past Ilkley, and with a little help from my iPhone, we made our way to the Smith Stephen H Garden Centre. Joy! First off, it's huge. A veritable maze of rooms, not exclusively related to the garden, but full of browsing items all the same. The first room we wandered through was the indoor plants section. There was a reasonable amount of variety, with exciting cacti and carnivorous plants to behold, and a number of lovely primroses, cyclamen and more. I'm not an expert at flora names, so for the purposes of the review, I'll do my best to describe the things I liked! The next room held a number of exciting canvass prints and artwork, a range of different fire contraptions for the garden, water features and a number of other garden furniture items. There was a food section, hosting jams, chutneys, snacks, cordials and all other things that give a farmers market vibe. Onward we went and discovered the outdoor plant section. A cornucopia of shrubs, bushes, hedges and other exotic plants were there for the viewing. Sadly, as it is February, the majority weren't in bloom so perhaps it was a poor choice of Sundays to browse. However, the more avid gardener would more than likely have the imagination to picture an end result with the variety on display! The prices were really rather reasonable with many of the pots retailing at far cheaper than I've seen at, say, B&Q. However, for some reason the bay and olive trees were a lot more expensive than the ones I'd bought previously at B&Q. Go figure. I ended up purchasing a sort of grassy tree indoor house plant and an orchid-esque exotic looking plant too. Neither have labels, so my guess is as good as yours in terms of the names for these plants! Here's hoping I manage to keep them alive without instruction... I also bought a minuscule leaf plant whose green leaves have pink lines, which look like weird veins. We both liked that. All in all, this lovely centre is well worth a browse. If you're impatient, like us, you won't spend more than an hour or so inside but it will be an hour well spent for some Sunday browsing. I can tell I'll be back! (I want a Venus Fly Trap for starters... )

Very popular garden centre with a newly opened Steam Railway Museum on site…read more There is a huge selection of gardening tools and accessories along with the usual plants and flowers. There's a decent cafe and the staff are very helpful. They have a crafts section and dolls house supplies too. A must visit as it's one of the best in the area.

I'm a regular customer here and I just wanted to say how lovely the staff are. No problem is too…read morelarge or small for them and they helped me pick out exactly what I needed for the size of my garden.

Good sized garden centre just on the outskirts of Conisbrough. Good selection of plants/flowers and…read moregarden furniture. Has a coffee shop which proves very popular. Also has a selection of sheds on offer.

This Wilkinsons is huge! It's over a few floors and sells everything you need. The downstairs feels…read morea little sparse of stock sometimes. Generally the prices are good, and.there can be useful offers on. One time though I wanted to buy a throw, and there was only one left. I picked it up and it was covered in pasta sauce, someone had hidden their rubbish under it and had wrecked it. I went to buy it at another store. I appreciate this is the fault of the customer but if the display had been tidied sooner it would have been cleared up before wrecking the throw.

I much prefer the city centre Debenhams to this one. The layout here makes less sense and I always…read morelose my bearings and start to panic like a five year old who's lost their mum. The sprawling perfume section at the entrance makes me want to gag - at least at the other Debs it's all nicely contained and you can steer clear if you don't want to be sprayed in the face by over-zealous sales assistants. Would much rather pay for my parking and battle with city centre crowds to get to t'other one, thank you very much. White Rose Debenhams - get a facelift.

I really like Debenhams - as usually when I visit I find something I like and need. The White Rose…read moreDebenhams is an excellent store with a great clothes section - all the Designers at Debenhams and other concessions. There's also a wedding section (where you can buy outfits and set up a wedding list), a house and home section, lingerie, make up and beauty and jewellry section. (My perfect shop everything all under one roof). There's also two good cafes. I prefer the one on the top floor as it tends to be quieter and they do nice lunches/ meals.

TL;DR - A truly unique venue combining art, food and shopping…read more One of Sparky's colleagues tipped us off about this place, and I'm amazed we'd never heard of it before. In case you don't know (I didn't!), Saltaire was built by industrialist Titus Salt (amazing name!) alongside the river Aire to bring all aspects of his textiles business onto one enormous site. He also built a town for the workers, and the whole area is now a world heritage site. The mill has now been converted into an amazing and huge venue spanning several floors. There's so much here it's hard to take in, but I'll try and summarise. The ground floor is a mixture of books on art, stationery and arts supplies, postcards and the like but interspersed with huge art displays. At first I wasn't sure if I was in an art gallery or a shop, but the answer is both. As with the rest of the mill, David Hockney features strongly throughout. There's a basement level which we didn't explore in detail, but it sells rugs and wallpapers and is just as big as the ground floor. The first floor houses the most. One end is a gorgeous bookshop, where the focus seems to be on unusual titles rather than breadth - I saw many, many books in the recipe section which I'd never seen or heard of anywhere else. The other end of the building is devoted to homewares - kitchen supplies, furniture, clocks and more. A lot of it is very expensive, but it's a beautifully curated selection of objects for sale. Between these two wings is Salt's Diner. It's a separate venue on Yelp but suffice it to say we had lunch here and it was great.Through the restaurant you can access a further wing of the building which is split into an outdoor clothing shop, a jewellers, an art exhibit, a treasure trove of an antique store and a small coffee shop. Finally, the top floor is split into three: an exhibit on the history of the mill, a major exhibition of work by David Hockney, and a further cafe/restaurant. On top of all these, parking is free on site and it's right next to the Saltaire train station, so there's really no excuse for not visiting.

Its easy to spend the best part of a day wandering round the amazing Salts Mill with its extensive…read morecollection of David Hockney's work and its eclectic selection of "shops" which include an excellent book shop, the wonderful home section with its stunning array of furnishings and kitchen porn, and the antique/collectables area. At some point you are going to need to get some fuel on board and Salts Diner is not a bad option. Its situated on the 1st floor of this wonderful labyrinthine industrial building in a large area between the book shop and the home shop. It was very busy on our visit between Christmas and New Year but we managed to get a table for 6 without much difficulty. The young waiting girls were all very helpful and attentive and we soon settled down with a reasonably priced bottle of Merlot to have a look at the menu. There is fairly wide choice of available, and while there is no real theme to the menu, there is enough to satisfy all the generations of family visitors that Salts Mill attracts. There are lots of ankle biters about so be careful in your choice of seating if you want a peaceful lunch. I had the roast butternut squash and lentil soup from the daily specials board which was tasty and wholesome, obviously a popular selection as it was soon rubbed off the board. B and I both went down the pizza route for our main and shared a bowl of nicely cooked crispy fries; nothing to complain about but pretty bog standard. The most successful main seemed to be Danny's beef meatballs and pasta in a rich tomato sauce, again from daily specials board, although the other boys were quite complimentary about their beef and ale pies which came in a nice white dish topped with puff pastry. All in all while this was nothing to write home about it was a pretty decent lunch in a great building. Salts Diner itself its not somewhere I would go out of my way to visit but works well a part of a visit to the Mill (I would particularly recommended a visit at the moment to see the amazing "Flowers" show on the top floor of work created by Mr Hockney on his iPad - just stunning). 3 for Salts Diner and 5 for the Mill.

This is a beautiful little florists in the heart of Ilkley. From the mere outside you can tell the…read morekind of love and care taken with their displays and craft, with beautifully lit little trees snipped into lollypop type shapes, which immediately reminded me of visiting Disney Land Paris, where they had fairly tale square and round shaped trees, which I in particular found to be very exciting! Inside it is somewhat like a sort of beautifully scented meditation room, with some lovely water features splishing away in the corner. The lady who served me was very friendly and helped me to choose a lovely bunch of flowers as a gift for a friend, who was very pleased - I'm told they lasted over two weeks, which is quite good value for money! As a lovely alternative to supermarket flowers, which are hit and miss at best, try Amity Rose if you're in Ilkley Town!

Amity Rose is essentially a florists with lavish and decadent extras thrown in. Two bay trees stand…read moreoutside, framing the doorway and the window display was very attractive with a large 'distressed' mirror and bird cages surrounded by plants and flowers. Inside, I particularly liked the bold decoration that would bring a subtle effect to a home or garden - like the large stones with small indents just big enough to fit a tea light in. Even though it was a small shop everything was quite grand. There was a vase nearly as tall as me filled with lemons! I fantasied about one day having a house suitable for any of this but if you're looking for some extras for your home maybe take a look here for something a bit different.

What with being let down once again by Virgin Media, I had to seek solace on such a rainy day as…read moreyesterday, with coffee and wifi. There's a number of spots about town in which to laze the day away with a supply of reasonable coffee, but since The Bowery is so close and it's been so long, I decided to set up here for lunch and respite from the rains. As far as I can tell, the place has gone from strength to strength, providing in-numerous excellent artistic courses for folks to partake of, alongside their range of fresh lunchables and gift-shop-cum-gallery. The programme of lessons looks fantastic, offering up everything from jewellery making to knitting, and browsing the hand crafted gifts about the cafe reveals a wealth of local talent and passion. I hadn't intended to purchase anything (one never does) but couldn't help be drawn in by some of the kitsch and quirky little items. The staff, as ever, are mega friendly, which makes a visit all the nicer. I decided to try the spinach and ricotta quiche, which comes with a sizeable plate of salad on the side. I have to say, whilst the quiche didn't make my mouth sing, the accompanying salad more than made up for this in flavour - the dressing was mouth watering, and the mix of sultanas, sesame seeds and such made this a healthy taste sensation. You can grab a decent sized latte for about £2, a pot of tea which yielded a few cups for the same, and of course the wifi is free. It's not coffee comparable to the likes of Bottega or Laynes, but the space more than makes up for this -and I'm not complaining, it was a good cup of Joe. The atmosphere defines relaxed, and with the array of art and crafts on the walls and in the cabinets, you're not short on excellent things to look at and ponder. The gallery and classroom space is upstairs, and whilst I didn't have an opportunity to wander around, I'll have to come back soon for a peek. I read also that the classroom space is available for hire for most art-related activities, for as little as £5 an hour I believe, which is fantastic for the local community. It's also worth noting that the toilet even has a mini seat that you can pull down, should you have kidlets in your company, which is a lovely touch. Overall, I'm a big fan of this place, and hope that Headingley continues to support independents like this. More of this, please Headingley. Get your senses open and your art head on.

The Bowery is more than just a cafe. Here you can also find art exhibition space, a classroom for…read moreworkshops and an impressive selection of cards and gifts. It's split across two floors and, while the upper floor is light and airy the lower floor feels a little cramped. Possibly because the lower floor contains the cafe and the gift shop but it does seem to work. Naturally, the gallery space is a little quieter but it's a lovely space and I really enjoyed wandering around and looking at the exhibits. It looks like the workshops room is really well used. A group was finishing a crafting workshop as we arrived and the website advertises further workshops as well as a series of short courses that starts in September and a variety of other events. We didn't stay for food but they're certainly popular, which has to be a good sign, and the cakes look great. I'd be tempted to return for a coffee and some treats but even if these turn out to be less than the best in the area The Bowery is doing a great job of pulling together a creative community in Headingley. They describe themselves as The Home of Creativity and I think that that suits them very well.