Church Lawford Nursery was one of the biggest draws for visitors to the village for many years. It opened in mid-1960s as a small plant-oriented nursery, just beyond the houses at the bottom of Kings Newnham Road. It grew over the years to offer a complete retail range of plants, shrubs and trees with a customer base over a wide area, offering employment to a number of villagers.
In 1987 it was improved and expanded to include even more gardening goods, along with gifts with a gardening focus – as well as a much improved car park. An advertising feature in the Coventry Evening Telegraph highlighted this story in March 1987.
The advertisement below was placed in the Rugby Advertiser in 1989.
After such a successful beginning it was acquired by succession of different garden-orientated companies.
Around 1990 it became Kennedys Garden Centre.
It was then taken over by Wyevale Garden Centres shortly before the Millennium.
Wyevale revised the facilities, and tried a number of initiatives including running a Rugby Flower Show in 2002, and were one of the limited retail outlets in the village at that time, notably on a Sunday. However in 2007-8 Wyevale also took over Blooms Garden Centre on the Straight Mile, resulting in the smaller Church Lawford centre being closed in 2011, not long after an armed raid on the premises.
After a number of attempts to preserve the site on the ancient river meadows it was given over to housing, with the Tower View site opening around 2016,