Colder than hoped-for weather is continuing to suppress sales – they’re certainly below where everyone was hoping they should be. We should be grateful though, because although sales are marginally down on last year for the last two weeks, they are up by more than 50% on the same weeks in 2013 when the weather was atrocious.

Garden Re-Leaf  Day and the Easter weekend are all important now. Sales of growing media and the sudden increase of young plant sales indicate that gardeners are itching to get going – we just need the weather to warm up enough for people to be able to spend good amounts of time out in the garden.

The opening of the new Percy Thrower’s Wyevale Garden Centre in Shrewsbury this week has seen really high plant sales, making up 25% of turnover.  With plenty of “story telling” about plants and themed groupings this is a great tale for the season ahead.

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

• Garden Products – up 1%
• Veg-2-Gro Products – down 14%
• Growing Media – static 0%
• All items index – down 7%