As garden centres ready themselves for the season the questions on everyones lips are “How will the season go?” “What will the weather be like for the next few weeks?”
Sunshine after the rains will surely get customers more active this week – provided their not in a flood area of course, and this weeks GTN Bestsellers charts indicate that keener gardeners are getting on with seed sowing and veg plot preperation despite the weather..
The Met Office weather forecast for March says “unsettled conditions persisting for much of this period but not to the same severity as we have seen recently.”
And it goes on to predict: “Temperatures are likely to be close to the seasonal average with colder periods possible between weather systems. This will maintain the risk of some frosty and icy nights, and also some hill snow, especially in the north.”
Now that sounds like a normal March to us and gives hope that gardeners will be able to get out on their plots in numbers this year. We can certainly do without the dips of in-activity that are illustrated in graphic above.
With Garden Re-Leaf Day on March 14 providing a national and local media stimulus to the start of the season we’re sure the green line on the chart above will once again be riding high above the levels for 2012 and 2013.
GTN Bestsellers Top 50 sales volumes compared to the same week last year:
- Garden Products – down 24%
- Veg 2 Gro – down 33%
- Growing Media – down 28%
- All items index – down 18%
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