Wow, what a week!  After all the concern and worry prompted by the lengthy colder spell of weather – including a really poor Good Friday and Easter Saturday – Easter Monday heralded a bumper week for garden centres providing GTN Bestsellers with EPoS data.

Gardening sales particularly boiled over with growing media up by 125% on the first week of Easter and nearly 50% up on the same week last year. Veg-2-Gro plant sales reached record levels and sales of garden products prompted high levels of re-ordering activity from centres on Tuesday morning.

At the GIMA AGM and Day Conference held this week at Haskins Roundstone Garden Centre suppliers were in good cheer. New GIMA President Colin Weatherley Mein from Vitax told GTN Bestsellers that they had received high re-stocking orders for their newest product 6X.  High sales levels of a product that keen gardeners use is great news when it comes to predicting high levels of growing activity.

2015 could be a bumper year – our all products index may be slightly down on last year currently, but a few more weeks of warm spring weather could inspire many UK gardeners to get out into their gardens and visit garden centres to decorate their plots.

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

• Garden Products – up 12%
• Veg-2-Gro Products – down 1%
• Growing Media – down 29%
• All items index – up 35%