Association Comment: GCA
Garden Centre Association Chairman, Mike Burks looks forward to garden centres reopening across the UK and updates us on the GCA’s pledge to continue working on environmental challenges this year by teaming up with Planet Mark to help evolve its inspection process.
We’re well on our way to spring now and have already enjoyed our first few days and even a weekend of real sunshine. At the time of writing, those of us in England are trying to digest the planned roadmap out of lockdown. It will, hopefully, culminate in the liſting of all restrictions by June 21 and some sort of ‘normal life’ returning.
As I write this, garden centres have just re-opened in Wales, which is wonderful news for Welsh gardeners, keen to get organised for the spring. There has also been a cautious and gradual plan announced in Scotland for the easing of measures, with garden centres re-opening on Easter Monday, April 5.
Northern Ireland has also released a five-step plan out of lockdown, with garden centres due to re-open at step three, however dates are not included in the current plan. As an industry, we have everything crossed that the roadmap out of
lockdown in England will go ahead as planned, and that the respective devolved administrations in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland will follow suit. However, as we have learnt, we live in unpredictable times, so we can only continue to be sensible and follow all the rules currently in place. In England, at the moment, there does seem to be some light at the
end of the tunnel. We’ve begun, as an Association, to refocus on the important challenges that cannot be allowed to fall by the wayside because of the pandemic.
One of those is the importance of the environment and how we can incorporate this into everything we do and support members in making a difference as businesses and individuals. We have exciting plans for our inspection process to ensure members are at the cutting edge of innovation and best practice when it comes to the environment and sustainability. We will be strengthening the process through an additional award promoting environmental practice. We’ve also teamed up with Planet Mark to help evolve our inspection process. It empowers businesses to make changes that will shape a more sustainable world. We’re working with the organisation and our inspectors to embed environmental factors into our inspections now and in the future. We’ll also be tweaking it to increase the weighting of our environmental section and we’ve exciting plans for further developments in 2022, with prototypes being rolled out for trialling later this year.
Our members will be asked to put forward an environmental champion from their business and we’ll be focusing on getting discussions between members going and encouraging them to develop their own appropriate in-house strategies. We’ll be giving members more information on this in due course.
In addition to our tie up with Planet Mark, we will also be working with and supporting the HTA’s ‘Sustainability Roadmap’. If the journey out of lockdown runs smoothly, this could be an exciting year for our industry, as the new gardeners we saw blossom last year start to become keener and to grow in confidence in 2021.
Garden centres see big boost in furniture & BBQ sales in February
Our Barometer of Trade (BoT) report for February has revealed furniture and barbecue sales at garden centres saw a 79.17% year to date increase during the month (2021). Although Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish centres were closed in February, as essential retailers, English centres remained open and recorded positive sales in seven of the 13 BoT categories. February is normally a quieter month for our members and with centres in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland still closed, it was a very difficult month for many and, subsequently, the majority of our members recorded figures that were
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www.gardencentreupdate.com down from previous years.
There were decreases in just under 50% of our BoT categories. Cafés and restaurants normally help drive footfall in centres during quieter gardening months like February, but hospitality, understandably, remained closed. The weather was also challenging in February, with just a handful of dry, calm, milder days, and this will have put many off being outdoors during the month. However, those members who were open have started to see some green shoots of recovery in some areas. It’s also wonderful to continue to see gardeners braving the
elements and getting ready for spring. It is clear gardening remains an essential activity to help boost the nation’s health and wellbeing too. It was clear in February that people were
preparing to spend more time in their gardens this year again and they were getting ready by buying furniture and barbecues early. The other categories to perform well in February included hard landscaping with sales up 24.92%, garden sundries up at 20.4% and seeds and bulbs up 19.34%. Sales in outdoor plants were up too at 8% and houseplants were up by 3.62%. • 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/GardenCentreAs sociation or follow us on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/GC_Association.
GCU May 2021
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