@Bee: It does sound like you have a gift card from a specific garden centre as all National Garden Gift cards carry the National Garden Gift Voucher logo. Specific garden centre gift cards can usually only be redeemed at that garden centre. As it has now expired I suggest you contact the garden centre, as each card issuer has its own policy regarding expiry dates. National Garden Gift cards are valid for 30 months after purchase. Hope that helps. martin, HTA.

You can find out the balance on your card by googling gardengiftcard.co.uk You then fill in the boxes with the 16 digit number on the card and then in the other box the shorter number given on the card. The balance then comes up

I agree with most of these comments already submitted. The problem I have is I am often given a garden gift card (it doesn't say on it National Gift Card) from a garden centre local to my family. I live in a part of the UK no where near this local nursery and as I often use transport other than the car I am usually unable to transport plants back to where I live. My local nurseries do not accept this card. One or two near me do accept the National Garden Scheme gift cards. This issue has meant that my Garden Gift card has now expired and in theory I cannot regain the money that somebody very kindly spent for my birthday prior to me moving to where I live now. Does anyone know if these can be redeemed post expiry date with a very good reason?

It would be nice if after all these years the HTA had managed to ensure that all garden centres & nurseries could sell & take these cards, but there are so many different EPOS systems out there the HTA have not found a simple cost effective way of ensuring their customers (us) can do this, very poor excuses like 'phone the number on the card and ask what the balance is', that is like credit checking your customer at the tills!, not good for customer service. the best way is to kindly ask the customer to call the HTA and tell them their cards are not being accepted and can they replace them with proper paper ones that can be accepted, they will do this but don't want to.

We always found it important to keep it local and sold our own with an extra incentive. We add loyalty points to their privilege card.

We stopped taking HTA Vouchers a few years ago.Its made no difference to our business whats so ever.

I have to ask what peoples thoughts are ? - Do we really need these Gift Cards? People used to have to visit and buy Garden Gift Tokens at their local Garden Centre, but now can do so in virtually every High Street and now Sainsburys! Then the problem with high denomination cards such as £25 and then £40 is the customer generally spends little more than that value (or spends it in smaller amounts taken off the card) meaning we loose 20% on every item they buy and thus leaving nominal margin after VAT!!! So again I have to ask - are these card a benefit to us Garden Centres, to the High Street retailers or to the HTA ?

So does this mean all the supermarkets etc. selling gift cards are HTA members??