Reports circulating in the national press and online over the past week say that retail entrepreneur Philip Day, owner of Edinburgh Woollen Mill and the Peacocks fashion chain, has put in a last-minute bid to buy Dobbies from Tesco.

The front-runner to date in a sale process Tesco is believed to want to complete before the EU referendum on 23 June, is Terra Firma, owners of Wyevale Garden Centres, who have instructed Goldman Sachs to prepare a bid.

The bidding queue was rumoured to be down to two parties, one existing garden industry party and one from outside the garden retailing business.

EWM have more than 500 stores in the UK, many of them in Dobbies Garden Centres and at Wyevale sites.  Last week EWM bought the Austin Reed brand (but not the shops.)

Philip Day has a respected reputation as a business turn-round specialist, having rescued Peacocks from collapse, saving 6,000 jobs. His company, EWM, recently bought the Austin Reed brand but not the 120 stores and they were also reported to be in the initail running to buy the now failed BHS chain.

EWM was at one stage owned by Rutland Partners the current investors in Gardman.The asking price for Dobbies, which made a loss of £47m last year due to write downs in the value of the business by Tesco plc, is understood to be in the region of £175m to £200m.