English Gardener Gift Shop—It's Brilliant!

An open door at Gift Shop does more than invite pedestrians in. It lets the scent out. The heady mix of lavender, body lotions and scents and fine English soaps escaping from the storefront is a strong draw.

“You don’t notice it after a while,” says owner Denise Strojan. But her comment battles with a strong urge by every visitor to push the plunger on tester bottles and smooth clean-smelling lotion onto her hands. 

Once inside, both men and women quickly can be hooked. Men are drawn to a display of rugby and soccer jerseys, pubware like pilsner glasses and mugs and a rack neatly stacked with woolen caps imported from Ireland. The store does not stock imported sweaters. 

Women with even the tiniest tad of house pride have to touch the chintz-pattered tea pots and cups, lift the silk wreaths and flower garlands, and sigh over garden décor.

Not even children escape the lure, what with tiny tea sets, stuffed animals and, oh my! the candy, all wrapped but most within reach.

The English Gardener Gift Shop, at 125 Kings Highway East, is a joint effort of Strojan and her husband, Gary Coleman, who owns the almost directly across the street.

Both are destination shops for Brits and Brit wannabes from surrounding states. The gift shop won third place in a U.S. nationwide Best of Britain contest held by The Daily & Sunday Telegraph, a London newspaper. It ranked eighth worldwide, said Coleman.

The shop, at its current location for almost three years after two years in smaller quarters on Mechanic Street, is a favorite, said Strojan, “for people who know people from the British Isles. They always bring them to our store and say, 'Look what we have here!'"

The quantity of items displayed in the store is astounding. Looking for rashers (English bacon) or bangers (sausage)? They’re in the freezer case in the rear of the store, near the frozen pork pies, the refrigerated cheeses, the British sodas and another rack of British candy. 

“The candy is the best,” said Coleman, who graduated from in 1972 and maintains ties to British relatives still living “across the pond.” The taste is created by the use of sugar, not corn syrup, he says, which means a shorter shelf life and a necessity to keep the shop very cool. “Or it melts,” he said, tossing a bar of Cadbury chocolate (made in the U.K., not the U.S.A., for an amazing taste differential). 

Strojan continues to work as a sales associate at Brooks Brothers in the Promenade Shopping Center in Marlton, where she began work as a tailor.

Together they travel to gift shows for new stock and new ideas. 

“We’ve had two good years, first with the (of Prince William and Catherine Middleton) last April, and now with both the coming Olympics and the queen’s jubilee,” said Coleman. 

Jubilee items, from tea towels made of Irish linen to plates decorated with the face of Queen Elizabeth II, are popular items and are displayed both in the shop window and in a case along one wall.

The imported items come from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, said the couple, who have been together for 10 years, after being introduced by a mutual friend.

If customers come in searching for an item, especially a food item, that isn’t in stock, Coleman will search for and order it.

The shop is open seven days a week, from 10 a.m. until at least 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday, the posted closing time is 8 p.m., but Strojan says it’s common for them to still be serving customers hours after that.

Often visitors to town will stop at the British Chip Shop for dinner and then cross Kings Highway to see the shop. Their dinner receipt will give them a $5 rebate on any $25 purchase in the gift shop that day. 

Coleman, who is an alternate member of the borough’s Partnership for Haddonfield, the borough's tax-funded business improvement district, said he constantly pushes other retailers to extend their hours.

“People come here to shop and eat. When they come out of restaurants, most of the stores are closed. They want to walk around, poke in some places. Especially with the rising price of gas, they’re not going to come back if the shops are closed,” he said. 

“I’ve always said, if you open your door, they will come in,” Strojan said of the shop hours they’ve adopted. 

“We like working in the store together, being here together. At night, you’ll find us moving stock around, changing the window display. We can’t do it when the customers are here. I think the customers like it that the shop is crowded with things. They like to discover new items and to find the things we’ve moved around,” she said. 

When food items begin to approach the sell-by date, the shop owners turn them over to the for donation to the Food Bank. 

“We wouldn’t have this shop anywhere but in Haddonfield,” both said.