A BRIDPORT business has started work on a new café - which it hopes to open to customers by the end of the year.

Groves Nurseries on West Bay Road has began work on refurbishments including a new café and restaurant, which will cater for up to 100 people.

Charlie Groves, managing director of Groves, said: "It's very exciting to see the first building works start after the long planning process, but it is business as usual.

"We hope there won't be too much disruption this week as they lay cables for the new café - but I would suggest customers try to visit us earlier in the day, between 8am and 10am when it's usually quieter.

"With works going on at the front of the nursery for these first few weeks, we have also reduced our free delivery threshold, for DT6 and DT8 postcodes, to an order spend of just £10 to help our customers."

Parking will be restricted at Groves while the initial work takes place, but customers can use The Crown Inn car park next door, as an overflow site.

Mr Groves added: "For years now, we have been planning a brand new restaurant for our garden centre.

"This initial phase of works began on Monday (20). Unfortunately, this is all of the boring stuff - the gas, electric, sewerage and water.

"This is currently all located underground in our top car parks and our lovely new restaurant is going at the back of the garden centre, next to our pond. This means this phase of the construction will be very disruptive to our parking - cutting off our two lower overflow car parks and digging up some of our top car parks.

"We are working extremely closely with very the reputable, local builders CG Fry, who will be doing everything they can to minimise disruption however we will have very limited parking during these works which we are expecting to last three weeks."

For more information, visit grovesnurseries.co.uk