Why Crews Hill Works: Farms, Garden Centres and the Businesses Around Them

Crews Hill makes most sense when you stop looking at each business as an isolated address and start looking at how the whole place works together.

The garden centres and nurseries are the most visible part of the Golden Mile, but around them is a wider working network: growers, farms, landscaping suppliers, garden-building specialists, cafés, equestrian businesses, trades, wholesalers, workshops and community organisations. Some serve the same customers. Some supply one another. Some simply give people another reason to make the journey and stay longer.

A modern rural economy does not stand still

Farm diversification is now a normal part of rural business in England. Defra reported that 72% of farm businesses in England had some diversified activity in 2024/25, with letting buildings the most common activity. Read the latest Defra figures.

That matters in Crews Hill because the area has never been frozen in time. Horticultural and agricultural businesses have adapted as markets, costs and customer needs have changed. Adaptation is not the same thing as abandonment.

Cattlegate Farm: farming, energy, compost and local enterprise

Cattlegate Farm is a particularly clear example. Equigrow describes it as a 2,500-acre arable farm in Enfield, diversified to include Equigrow, Willen Biogas, herb growing and business units alongside farming.

The links inside that operation are practical. Hay from the farm goes to local stables; manure is collected back for Equigrow soil-conditioning products. Equigrow says its compost and soil products are made on the Enfield farm, peat-free and based on natural materials.

That is not a picture of agriculture disappearing. It is a picture of agriculture changing while still using the land, farm infrastructure, local materials and rural business relationships. Read more from Equigrow.

Thompsons: from glasshouse crops to a broader garden economy

The history of Thompsons of Crews Hill shows another kind of evolution. The Thompson family says the site was bought in 1948 and used to grow commercial glasshouse crops for London and the Home Counties. During the 1980s, as many Crews Hill businesses moved from nurseries toward garden centres, Thompsons expanded into soils, soil conditioners, turf and later aggregates, paving and other garden materials.

Today Thompsons serves both trade and retail customers from Cattlegate Road and delivers across London and the Home Counties. See the current Thompsons operation.

The important point is not that the business stayed exactly the same. It is that specialist knowledge, customer habits, land, yard space, access and a recognised garden destination gave it room to evolve.

Why the cluster matters

A visitor coming to Crews Hill for one job is often surrounded by businesses solving the next part of the same problem. Someone buying turf or paving may also be considering fencing, planting, a shed, greenhouse or garden room. Someone choosing plants may stop for coffee, discover furniture or visit another specialist supplier while they are already here.

We should be careful not to claim that every customer visits several businesses on every trip — we do not have evidence for that. But the commercial logic of the cluster is easy to see: complementary businesses share a destination, parking, road access, trade customers and the reputation Crews Hill has built around gardens, outdoor living and land-based activity.

The value is not only in each individual business. Part of the value is in the network between them.

Not every business is equally tied to the land

A farm, nursery, equestrian centre or golf course is plainly more place-dependent than a haulage office or an electrician. That distinction matters. A credible account of Crews Hill should not pretend every business would become impossible if it moved.

For some businesses, the stronger question is whether relocation would leave Enfield, break local employment or supplier links, increase journeys, remove a useful service from the area, or separate the business from the customer cluster that currently helps it trade. For others, the land, buildings and local network are so central that relocation could fundamentally change the operation.

Still horticultural at its core

Crews Hill is not simply trading on a horticultural memory. Enfield Council continues to describe it as having one of the UK's largest concentrations of specialist garden, nursery and aquatic centres, with plants, garden products, design and landscaping services. See Enfield Council's current Crews Hill description.

That active horticultural core is what makes the wider diversification story convincing. Farms, nurseries and garden centres remain present; around them, entrepreneurs have found ways to use buildings, yards and customer footfall more productively.

A working place, not a polished retail park

Crews Hill is a little jumbled. There are greenhouses, yards, delivery vehicles, timber, soil, workshops, cafés, horses, old signs and businesses hidden inside other businesses. That can make it harder to understand at first glance — but it is also evidence of a place that has grown through practical use rather than being designed all at once.

If you want to see how that works for yourself, use our Plan Your Visit guide and explore several different parts of Crews Hill in the same trip.

Sources and checking

Information checked: 3 September 2026. This article draws on current first-party and official sources including Defra, Enfield Council, Equigrow/Cattlegate Farm and Thompsons of Crews Hill. Where interpretation is offered — particularly around business clustering and relocation — it is identified as analysis rather than presented as measured fact.