Good Friday and Easter Saturday once again failed to make up for being closed on Easter Sunday as cold weather saw sales down on the previous week when most garden centres would have been hoping for big increases.
Back in 2010 – the last time Easter fell on the same weeks – the Met Office reported “March ended with gales along the English Channel and heavy showers in most places, these falling as snow over the high ground of the west and north.”
This year’s summary for the end of March reads: “The final week was rather unsettled with rain or showers generally and some very strong winds.” Sound familiar? We would add that the wind has been cold, which must have kept many potential customers indoors.
Five years ago GTN Bestsellers reported week-on-week sales to be down for the first week of Easter across all of the Top 50 and All Products indexes.
This year the exception is Veg-2-Gro where an explosion of young veg plant sales has bucked the trend, sending sales soaring. Five years ago 12 young plant lines made the Top 50 and they were all from Kinglea.
This week 45 of the Top 50 are young veg plants from Quantil. That must be creating a host of new sales opportunities as trolley loads of plants go through your tills.
GTN Bestsellers Top 50 sales volumes compared to the same week last year...
- Garden Products – down 25%
- Veg-2-Gro Products – down 1%
- Growing Media – down 29%
- All items index – down 14%
To subscribe to GTN Bestsellers email karen.pfeiffer@tgcmc.co.uk
Pupils at Sherborne Primary School in Dorset have been invited by Castle Gardens to take part in The Gardens Group’s new Young Grower of the Year competition. Each class from the school has received pre-potted bell pepper plants to grow in their classroom.
Tony Das, houseplants manager at Castle Gardens (pictured above, top right) said: “We have been inundated with young growers flocking to Castle Gardens to collect their free pepper growing kit. We are delighted to see that so many children and their families want to get involved in this competition.”
The judging will take place at Sherborne Primary School just before Castle Gardens’ Chilli Pepper Festival, which takes place on July 20-26.
