Quality & Natural Materials

• We specialise in natural, premium materials like wool, felt, and leather in their slipper and clog ranges—highlighting comfort, craftsmanship, and durability.

Comfort & Fit

• Our shoes are designed for everyday comfort, often compatible with custom orthotics for a better fit—our commitment to foot health.

Excellent Customer Service

• We provide friendly, responsive customer support, ensuring inquiries are handled quickly via phone and email during business hours .

• We maintain a customer-centric returns policy (30-day window, clear guidance on process, refunds within ~14 days) 

Secure & Sustainable Shopping

• We offer secure payment methods and highlight products handmade in Europe—reducing environmental impact and emphasizing sustainability.

Wide & Curated Selection

• We offer a broad selection of premium brands (e.g., Haflinger, Arche, Glerups, Legero, Wolky, Shepherd, Oma-King), refresh collections regularly, and add new, exclusive footwear and accessories.

Shoes are our passion

We began our journey by making shoes, so understand how much goes into great comfortable shoes. Connection to the earth is extremely important and everything we select excels in quality, fit and comfort.

We are a small, but organically growing family business made up of shoe makers and shoe lovers. We are passionate about comfortable shoes and natural materials, so we don’t make compromises with the quality of our products and customer service we provide.

Our focus is on European shoes from European brands, meaning fewer delivery miles, fair practice and a long tradition of making shoes using natural materials.

Why buy from us?

• FREE Delivery
• Shoegarden offers the biggest and best selection of Haflinger wool, felt and leather slippers and clogs in the UK
• 30 Day return policy
• Delivered by Royal Mail
• Friendly Customer Service 
• Secure Payment

We are based in Cambridge – one of the most beautiful and historical cities in the UK. The surroundings and the atmosphere of the city match Shoegarden’s ethos.

Our team is bright and colourful, just like our shoes. We all have our own hobbies and interest like horses, dogs, walking, DJing, photography, knitting and crafts, but when we get together we have lots of fun.

1973- Sundaes Sandals
After training at Clarks and despite the English weather, Nick Lane saw an opportunity for making handmade leather sandals in England and so Sundaes was born. You could pretty much select any colour under the sun, as they were made to order and looked so colourful that they resembled the brightly coloured stalls that sold ice cream sundaes- hence the name.

1983 - Magdalene Shoe Shop 
The sandals were proving successful at craft shows and by mail order. Nick spotted that their wasn't any offering for comfortable European shoes in Cambridge. A suitable shop was available in Magdalene Street, Cambridge. At this time all shop fronts had to correspond to the university's design and name. The only allowed name was the Magdalene street shoe shop. We went with it and a traditional sign painter expertly painted the name on the shop front. 

1993 - Sundaes Shoe Shop
Craft shows start to lose their potency as people move towards high street shopping and we have outgrown our small shop. The Sundaes shop moves further into Cambridge to Green Street.  By this time we are allowed to use our own name for the shop.

1998- Haflinger
We spotted Haflinger slippers and clogs at a show in Germany and became the first shop in the UK to offer these wonderful slippers and clogs.

2008- Shoegarden
The online world was growing quickly so traditional mail order using the phone and cheques was diminishing. After a spell in Nottingham, London and Japan, Will Lane joins the team and takes on the the task of launching Sundaes online. Sundaes was a confusing name online, difficult to spell and had no reference to shoes in it and the dreaded double S- "Sundaesshoes". We had about 20 ideas for potential names from Shoehorse to Youshoe but Shoegarden had the best ring to it. A lot of our photography was taken in natural settings, so it seemed to make sense.

2018 - 10 years Anniversary
We celebrated 10 years of Shoegarden and 35 years of the Sundaes Shop.

2020- Covid Ends our Sundaes Shop
Uncertainty and low footfall means that sadly, we have to close our Cambridge shop. Changing shopping habits meant more customers were shopping online. Buying shoes requires long lead times- up to 10 months, without knowing when we could re-open we took the difficult decision to close the shop permanently.

2023- Anniversary year
We celebrate our 40th Anniversary milestone. We've evolved over the last 40 years from shows via shops to online.  Throughout these changes we remain committed to friendly, efficient service and quality products.

Every year we visit the biggest and best fashion shows in Milan, Düsseldorf and London to cherry pick the best European brands.

2024- Improved website
We have updated to web 2.0 with an updated theme.
Haflinger has a new enhanced range including the new Manhattan clog and Glerups continue to grow.

2025- This year
OmaKing from Estonia joins our offering, with an emphasis on wide fit and barefoot options. We have updated our returns policy to 30 days.
El Naturalista rejoins us after a long sabbatical, specialising in natural leathers and sustainability.
New GPSR rules come into effect in Europe and we now comply with these for sending to Northern Ireland and Ireland.
For our American customers we switched to UPS for deliveries.