“It was just like an old fashioned Bank Holiday Monday” enthused Sarah Squire to GTN Bestsellers this week as garden centre plants sales hit a a record high,

were at the forefront with sales reaching almost 50% higher than the same week last year to set a record GTN Bestsellers plant sales week to bring the year-on-year total back almost to parity. We now have only 0.7% to make up over the next few weeks for plants to be up year-on-year. Who’d have thought that six or seven weeks ago!

Only 10 weeks after we reported the lowest sales week in garden centres, GTN Bestsellers can now report that the week beginning with the May Bank Holiday Monday was the highest week ever for garden centre sales volumes. Record Bank Holiday Monday temperatures and a week of "good" gardening weather sent sales volumes soaring to a record high, so high that the increase over the same week last year was greater than the shortfall from the last week of February when the record low was set in all that snow. Now, after 19 weeks of the year, the GTN Bestsellers All Product Sales Index is running at 6.3% down year on year to date. That is a huge swing back from the minus 16.6% it was sitting on at the end of March. If the weather holds, the bedding sales season should still have life in it.