Santa has proved to be a bigger attraction than ever at UK garden centres with stores reporting record numbers of families taking advantage of the superb Christmas displays and grottos.

Last week’s sales volumes, as reported in the GTN Bestsellers Epos weekly data, make it the second highest for volume sales, only beaten by the week ending June 2 this year. And it’s not just Christmas sales and Santa visits that are driving the increases – almost every indoor sales category is up, including gardening.

The Garden Products Top 50 reveals a clear crossover with Christmas as customers decorate their gardens as well as indoors plus buy gardening products as gifts.

The Greatest Christmas Awards team is nearing the end of its epic travels to meet all of the 200-plus teams nominated in this year’s awards but there’s still time to get your customers to vote for you as The Greatest Garden Centre at Christmas – voting continues until December 24th. For more details contact trevor.pfeiffer@tgcmc.co.uk

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

• Garden Products – up 14%
• Christmas – down 4%
• Growing Media – up 33%
• All items index – up 14%

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