As the first part of the late May Bank holiday held its own on last year in sales volume terms, the weather turned and garden centre thoughts were once again along the lines of: “Will we get a summer – or will the coldest spring for 30 years be followed by months of grey skies and drizzle?”

Overall sales volumes in the GTN Bestsellers charts may be up on last year now, but with sales still over 10% below 2011 levels we've still got a long way before we can cite 2013 as being a good year.

The omens are good – the Aussies will soon be here for an Ashes cricket campaign and the summers of 2005 and 2009 were both good weather wise. Keep your fingers crossed that the four year cycle repeats itself…

The sounds of summer have already started to play in some centres. Garden Radio has just added a playlist of summer songs to its in-store music and messaging service.  “After running a Christmas library every year to help the retail ambience during the autumn we decided we should use our music to add to the summer feel-good factor too," said Garden Radio founder Trevor Pfeiffer.

What other ideas have you developed to give customers that summer feel-good factor when they visit your centre?

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

Garden Products – down 18%

Veg-2-Gro – up 33%

Growing Media – down 21%

All items index – up 3%

WARNING the GTN Bestsellers Charts can seriously improve your business. Only subscribe if you want to invest 15 minutes each week in improving your turnover and customer satisfaction.