The Easter period turned out to be yet another challenging week for garden retailers, with lingering snow and continuing wintry conditions subduing consumer spending over what we used to know as the spring sales peak.

Once again, it was catering that came to the rescue for many garden centres. There were reports of decent footfall, despite the conditions, but few consumers were in the mood for gardening. This week’s charts clearly show that, in the main, it is keen gardeners who are spending, presumably taking the optimistic view that spring will arrive sometime soon.



The GTN Bestsellers Top 50 sales volumes compared to the same week last year do not make happy reading:

Garden Products – Down 28%

Veg 2 Gro – Down 53%

Growing Media – Down 67%

All items index – Down 27%

At first glance, the week-on week increase of more than 23% looks like good news – but remember, the previous week was badly hit by snow and very low temperatures, which leaves garden centre trading for the first quarter of 2013 almost 10% down on last year and trailing even further behind the same period in 2011. And another thing...the previous two years did not include the Easter ‘trump card’.

Garden centres who ran events and activities over the Easter period were the winners.

GCA chairman Peter Burks said: ”Thankfully the sun put in an appearance so it wasn’t all doom and gloom. There were plenty of people visiting our member garden centres during Easter but the cold weather appeared to have put people off going out in their gardens as most had come in for a wander round, a cuppa in the restaurant or to pick up a gift. Unfortunately, overall sales were well below what was expected.”

He said members understood the importance of giving customers something to come in for whatever the weather, which helped to boost family visitors.