With winter refusing to loosen its grip, the garden industry is now relying on pent-up demand to put sales back on track once the much delayed spring finally arrives.

There is wide concensus across the industry that consumer demand for gardening, held back last year by rain and now by the cold snap, is likely to be strong when people are able to get onto their gardens again. Research has shown that interest in gardening revives when the mercury hits 15C – as it did in March 2012 and again, albeit briefly, in March 2013.

The GCA recently urged members not to lose their nerve and to be ready for the upturn when it comes. They’ll need to hang on to that advice for a bit longer.

Meanwhile, poor trading is already beginning to affect business fortunes. ITV News this week reported from Capital Garden Centre in London, where manager Tim McLeod-Rice has cancelled all orders for spring bedding and started to lay off staff at a point in the season when he would normally be recruiting, following an 80 per cent fall in sales in recent weeks. “This time last year we were in shorts and T-shirts,” he said.  However, the centre did sell out of logs…. Click the link to watch the report.  www.itv.com/news/london/update/2013-03-25/garden-centre-hit-by-wintry-weather/

Reports have been reaching GTN of other possible redundancies as centres count the cost of reduced footfall and low demand.

A knock-on effect on cash flows is now regarded as inevitable. Pre-season terms generally allow retailers to settle invoices in Spring when products have begun to sell. “The problem this year will be that retailers won't have been selling enough to cover the cost of the order,” said Neil Gow, director of GIMA. “I’m sure many will be finding it difficult to pay their suppliers.”

Gow urged retailers who find themselves in difficulties to keep talking to their suppliers. “The thing that unnerves a supplier is a customer who goes quiet,” he said. “If a retailer talks it through with the supplier, it’s reasonable to assume arrangements with a certain amount of flexibility might be possible – and he might avoid ending up on a’stop’ list, which is the last thing you want when the sun comes out and you find yourelf wanting more stock. It’s at times like this that relationships really matter.”

Despite the current gloom, that good old British sense of humour continues to put a veneer of stoicism on the situation as you’ll read in the story below…


Above: Once again, catering has come to the rescue of many garden centres.