Animal Encounters at Pughs Garden Centre

Pughs Garden Centre is one of my favourite places to take my children. The centre itself sells a fantastic range of plants, furniture, gifts and more. There’s also a cafe which sells lovely food.

In the summer holidays, Pughs Garden Centre run a number of different workshops for children. We’ve been to many different ones such as the butterfly ball, spooky spider crafts and we go there every year to meet Santa!

This time around I booked onto their animal encounters workshop. A few days before we were due to visit, they popped up on my Facebook feed with a post showing some of the animals at a previous workshop. Snakes, tortoises and lizards! I was a bit taken a back, but excited none-the-less!

When we arrived we were seated outside the workshop (pictured above) to do some colouring whilst we waited for everyone who had booked to arrive.

After a short wait we went into the woodland lodge and it wasn’t long before we met the first animal. An Agouti. They’re native to middle America, northern and central South America, and the southern Lesser Antilles, so we were very lucky to be able to meet one and have the opportunity to stroke one too.

Next up were some meerkats called Boo, Mico, George and Bobby. Pictured below is George. How cute is he!

When they were first let out, they were running around amongst our feet searching for food that their handlers had sprinkled on the floor. They were very fast and super cute!

We then met a lesser hedgehog tenrec, and I was surprised to learn that they make great pets! They’re very cute that’s for sure, and apparently also very easy to care for.

Last up is a ring tailed coatimundi from South America. They’re a member of the raccoon family, from tropical and subtropical South America.

As always we had a wonderful time at Pughs Garden Centre and we’re very much looking forward to our next visit!