Increased gardening activity has driven significantly increased garden centre sales this October. Just look at the year-on-year movements of the GTN volume sales indexes for last week:

GTN Bestsellers Top 50 sales volumes compared to the same week last year (week 42):

• Growing Media Top 50 – up 76%
• Veg 2 Gro Top 50 – up 74%
• Garden Products Top 50 – up 13%
• Wild Bird & Wildlife Care Top 50 – up 6%
• Christmas Top 50 – static 0%

GTN Bestsellers All Sales volumes compared to the same week last year (week 42):

• All Plants with Barcode index – up 35%
• All Items with Barcode index – up 22%

That performance for Growing Media means the GTN Bestsellers year-to-date index is now at +0.7% after being at -51% when garden centres re-opened in May.  Since the start of September growing media sales have been on average 66% ahead of last year, indicating a possible two-thirds increase in core growing activity. If just half of that carries over to next year we could be reporting more record sales through March, April and May in 2022. We just need to be able to keep trading to service the demand.

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