Barnitts opened its door (there was only one at that time!) and welcomed the first customers into the shop in the year of 1896 during the reign of Queen Victoria.

The shop was the idea of Mr George Barnitt who opened it as a 'General and Furnishing Ironmonger and Agricultural Implement Agent'. As George already came from a family of farming stock he was comfortable selling agricultural ironmongery and felt he could give customers sound practical advice.

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What to blog about at Barnitts in York?

Maybe this time we will have a change and go right back to the year 1896, during Queen Victoria's reign when we opened and give you a brief overview of our store.

For the people of York and surrounding areas Barnitts is simply a Home & Garden store that has always been there and has long been named as a firm favourite.

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With the Great British Bake Off coming back to our screens, we thought we'd take a look at some baking products to give you some inspiration to bake your own show stopping creations.

The Kitchen Craft brand has an adorable range of decorating tools named Sweetly Does It. This range has products such as bun cases, fondant moulds and icing tools to help you create professional looking home bakes. We are going to take a look at a selection of products and what can be created with them.

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New kitchen tools are an exciting concept for most baking enthusiasts, having key tools and equipment gives you a variety of recipe possibilities. There are a wide range of baking products out there to give you new techniques and methods to experiment with. Here at Barnitts we have a wide selection of baking products to enable you to develop your baking skills and produce homemade buns and cakes to be proud of.

Our bakeware range includes a range of quality cake tins and oven trays to help you bake your cakes to perfection. Once your cake is baked and it has cooled down, it is time for your creative juices to flow by decorating it. We have many tools that will allow you to create beautifully detailed cakes. A great way to add detail and texture to your cake is to use an icing bag and nozzle, there are a variety of different shapes and sizes of icing nozzle that will allow you to create lots of different effects. With piped icing you can create flowers, leaves, writing, boarders and much more. Fondant, sugar craft and royal icing provide many options to decorate cakes using various tools. Fondant moulds are an excellent way of producing professional looking decorations for your cake without any fuss. We stock moulds based around themes such as flowers, weddings and babies for creating cakes for many special occasions. If you would like to try your hand at delicate detail icing modelling tools allow you to use your creative flare to create freestyle decorations.

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Spring is the ideal time to give your garden some TLC, whether it's keeping on top of maintaining your garden or giving it a make over, you'll want to get your garden ready for those summer gatherings.

Step one - Rejuvenate your lawn

A great place to start is by tidying your lawn, over the winter months you may rarely get a clear and dry day to cultivate your grass.

When spring arrives it is wonderful to get outdoors in the fresh air and tend to your garden. You may want to start by taking care of any weeds that may have sprouted. You can clear these the old fashion way by pulling or digging the weeds and their roots out, although this sometimes creates a mess in your garden. An easier way that involves less hard word is to use weed killer to safely remove the weeds and prevent them growing back.

We sell a range of weed killing products such as Roundup GC All Surfaces Liquid Concentrate (280sqm) to help kill weeds quickly.

Now that you have taken care of the weeds, you are ready to give your grass a cut with the lawn mower. Whilst mowing beware of any hard debris such a stones and sticks that may get caught in the blades. This is also a good time to check the edges of your lawn are tidy, this can be done by digging out your edges with a spade or half moon edger.

Once your grass is trimmed down now is a great time to apply fertiliser to your garden, this will give it a new lease of life and help promote healthy growth.

Our vast range of garden tools will help with all garden maintenance.

Step Two - Trim your shrubs and hedges

You can now start to tidy any hedges or shrubs by removing any over grown or dead branches on shrubs and trimming down hedges. These tasks can be completed with pruning shears or hedge trimmers.

Our Green Blade Power Pruners are great for cutting back plants and shrubs.

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