Do you remember trading in March 2013?  Well, this March is significantly better than that, up by 40% for all items sold according to GTN Bestsellers Epos data. So despite sales for the month being 8% down on last year, the deficit is recoverable if we have a good April and May.

The GTN Bestsellers figures indicate that it’s the less keen gardeners who are not making garden centre visits just yet. The three key gardening indicators from GTN Bestsellers – Garden Products, Veg-2-Gro and Growing Media – are all up year-on-year this week, but total garden centre sales are down.

Once again we are being dictated to by the good old British weather. All we need is a spell of warm dry sunny weather as we move into Easter and then we’ll probably get to the April levels of last year if not slightly ahead.

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

• Garden Products – up 4%
• Veg-2-Gro Products – up 4%
• Growing Media – up 5%
• All items index – down 6%