As the school summer holidays arrive there is a flurry of new summer activities at garden centres this year.  Adding to the plethora of garden centre beaches there are outdoor cinemas (Webbs), crazy golf courses (Bents), maize mazes (Skylark) and now at least three Fairy & Dragon grottos (Hayes, Ruxley and Whitehall) opening.

As our graph below shows the summer low in garden centre sales volumes is very consistent year after year.  If only a substitute for Christmas could be found to drive high footfall and therefore push sales and create a summer peak instead.

Given the sales levels of garden lighting, plants looking great and other combinations of instant summer garden decoration any increases in family footfall generated by these initiatives could be the start of a new trend.

Are you opening a new summer footfall driving attraction this year? Let us know about your idea: trevor.pfeiffer@tgcmc.co.uk

• Garden Products Top 50 – down 20%
• Growing Media Top 50 – down 17%
• Veg 2 Gro Products Top 50 – down 19%
• All Plants index – down 10%
• All Items index – down 8%