Gardening: A company going for growth: Van Hage's, the pounds 4m garden superstore, offers endless diversions for a shopper with an empty trolley, says Anna Pavord

He had, Victor Kendall said, only come in for a bag of compost. So what was he doing at the Van Hage Garden Company in Great Amwell, Hertfordshire, peering over the top of a trolley quivering to the brim with plants and other sundries?

Well, he explained, he had suddenly remembered his greenhouse tomatoes and bought a couple of Gro-bags for them. Then he had thought about the gaps in the flower borders and hoovered over the perennials, coming away with red- hot pokers, gaillardias and lupins. After that, he thought he might as well go and look at the alpines. There were gaps in his rockery, too.

All this, of course, is music to the ears of William van Hage, marketing director of the garden centre that no longer calls itself a garden centre. 'Garden centres generally have had such bad publicity. Ill-informed staff, poor quality plants - we wanted to distance ourselves from all that. Reposition ourselves.'

Crumbs, you think, as you take in the lavatories with Doric columns and his 'n' hers classical statues at the doors, the acres of covered glass, the coffee shop, the pounds 200 clipped yew pyramids in large Greek pots that line the pergola walks. Some repositioning.

On one of the first sunny days of spring, Van Hage's, which last year was voted the best houseplant centre in the UK and the best garden centre in the north Thames region, was buzzing with the quiet, contented noise of gardeners on a spree. 'Do you come here often?' I asked Roy and Pat Wonfor. Several times a week, they said. They often met there for lunch, and rarely left without a plant.

They were replanning a section of their garden, thinking of putting in a new flowerbed. They considered themselves connoisseurs of garden centres and gave Van Hage's top marks. 'One of the best places for variety and quality of plants,' they said. Not cheap, but reasonable. Even their children (they have five) did not mind going there at weekends. There are budgerigars, ducks, pheasants and a miniature railway.

'One thing I have learnt,' said Gillian Purkiss, another regular, 'is that it's no good coming with a list of particular varieties. You'll find plenty of lilacs, or pinks, or geraniums, but they won't necessarily be the types you've read about in your gardening book. The varieties seem to change so fast now.' She had bought some herbs for a new herb garden, but had spent several hours just looking. She said she liked the place because it was peaceful.

Not so peaceful that it does not earn pounds 4m a year, though, with at least a million people visiting, many in the three months from April to June. What makes the most money? 'Plants have the biggest mark-up,' Mr van Hage said. But they need to. With a product that can die as easily as live, there is massive wastage. Quality means ditching any plant that is not in peak condition.

Plants, though, remain the most important element of any good garden centre. The others - the Neal's Yard wholefood store, the silk flowers, the gaily striped upholstery of garden furniture - are trimmings.

I visit garden centres as I might visit foreign territory, not understanding quite how you are supposed to tackle them. As I generally prefer small enterprises to large, most of my plants are picked up piecemeal, on forays to specialist nurseries or by mail order.

At Van Hage's you are in the realm of garden centre as entertainment. A great deal of trouble has been taken to make you feel you have shed the real world as you walk in the door and have entered a nirvana where everything is always in flower. The building is well designed, there are masses of huge, lush, well cared-for houseplants, excellent pergola structures outside providing shade and shelter for containerised roses and fruit trees - and some pretty dire demonstration gardens (a lot of hard landscaping and not enough plants). That was the only minus point.

Ruth Southworth, looking for plants for a boggy area of her garden, saw no minus points. Neither did Phil and June Cohen, choosing plants to disguise a new fence. They had decided on a ceanothus with some silver-leaved Convolvulus cneorum to go round its feet.

The Van Hage Garden Company did not feature in either of the last two surveys carried out by Gardening Which? on garden centres. The first, published last April, judged them in terms of value, looking at prices, service and the quality and choice of plants. Dobbies, Kennedys and Strikes came best out of that exercise. Country Gardens, Hilliers, Hurrans, Homebase, Jardiniere, Notcutts, Texas and Wyevale were in the second division, B&Q, Do It All and Great Mills at the bottom.

Last month's Gardening Which? carried a different survey, judging 60 garden centres only on the quality of their plants. Dobbies' Midlothian centre was at the top of this list, too. Kennedys and Strikes became runners-up. The best garden- centre plants the magazine's experts saw in the Midlands were at Webbs of Droitwich, and in the South-east at Knights of Godstone.

I bought, of course. How could I not, surrounded by gardeners stashing away on their trolleys enough plants to line the M25? (Both sides.) I got a few pots of a surprising grape hyacinth, Muscari latifolium. The bottom half of the flower is navy- blue, the topknot much paler. And it has only one broad leaf, which is a great advantage, given the sheaves of grass that the others produce.

'Weeds,' said a man in disgust to his wife as I picked up the pots.

'But those are different,' she said. 'The flowers are different.'

'All grape hyacinths are weeds,' he said, not looking, and went to ogle the heathers.

I made sure he was not about when I picked my saxifrage. I needed something to fill in between the flat paving slabs that make an informal path up the bank. It had to be a low plant that could survive a heel on its head from time to time. I chose 'Findling', a mossy saxifrage with fine, bright green foliage and small white flowers. It is a quiet plant, which is what that situation needs.

Then I remembered I had run out of slug pellets. I also needed some Osmacote slow-release fertiliser for the outside pots. Before I knew it, I was doing a Victor.

Van Hage Garden Company, Great Amwell, Ware, Hertfordshire (six miles off the M25); open every day (9am-6pm).

(Photograph omitted)