association comment
Emerging from lockdown The latest from the Garden Centre Association (GCA), from chairman, Mike Burks
Due to the lockdown our members haven’t been able to get together for our annual regional meetings.
One of the biggest benefits of being a member of the GCA is being able to share best practice and ideas with other members and, as our regional meetings are unable to take place as they normally would this year, we’ve decided to get together virtually instead. While it won’t ever be the same as meeting in real life, the virtual forums we have launched have been a great opportunity for members to come together, debate and communicate.
We held our first forum in July, which was a joint initiative with The Garden Industry Manufacturer’s Association (GIMA). We heard from representatives from both the GCA and GIMA who discussed the pressures everyone has been facing and how we could work together to come up with improvements that will help us all in the medium to longer term.
Our second, for our members only, was a chance for them to come together and discuss the challenges they faced with the re-opening of restaurants and cafés.
It is incredibly important we keep these lines of communication open. The forums were extremely helpful for everyone who attended. Our virtual forums will continue to take place during the next six to 12 months when a range of topics will be discussed. They will become even more helpful as we lead up to one of the industry’s busiest times of the year, Christmas, and it is imperative that members can get together to discuss how they will tackle the season. We will be running another forum shortly to discuss all things Christmas. More details will be announced to members soon. We can only hope that things continue to improve and we’re keeping our fingers crossed for more good weather during the rest of summer and into autumn. It’s up to us all to actively promote the benefits of autumn tree and shrub planting to anyone who missed out in the spring, as autumn is just as important as the spring for planting, but not many members of the general public realise this. Our Barometer of Trade figures from member garden centres are
slowly but surely improving. Sales in garden furniture and barbecues continued to rise for a second month in June thanks to a good mix of weather and in July it looks like houseplants were the star of the show for the month. It will be interesting to see how things improve further at the year
goes on. We are expecting catering figures to go up dramatically for August thanks to the Government’s Eat Out to Help Out scheme. Watch this space.
• For further information about the GCA, please call 01244 952170. Alternatively, please visit our website
www.gca.org.uk, log on to
www.facebook.com/pages/GardenCentreAssociation or follow us on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/GC_Association.
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www.gardencentreupdate.com GCU Autumn 2020
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