Halloween and the half-term school holiday has sent sales volumes back up to mid-June levels. Combined with spectacular Christmas displays they helped to boost business at garden centres.

GTN Bestsellers Epos data shows sales for the last week of October up by 15% in volume terms and up by almost 16% for the whole of the month, making it the busiest October for the past five years that GTN Bestsellers has been monitoring weekly garden centre volume sales.

Next week sees some garden centres opening their Christmas Grottos to maximise that all important traffic flow generator. The big question now is will the weather hold off with any serious snow until after the big day ahead?

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

• Garden Products – up 13%
• Christmas – down 12%
• Growing Media – up 11%
• All items index – up 15%

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