Outdoor categories stole the show in Oct at GCA centres

Garden centre customers were still getting out in their gardens last month (October, 2014) according to our Barometer of Trade (BoT) results.

The results showed hard landscaping sales were 25.84% up, furniture and barbeques 18.75% up and outdoor plants 14.5% up as compared to October, 2013.

The cooler weather certainly hasn’t put gardeners off from getting out into their gardens.

We know that October is a great month to plant all sorts of things such as spring flowering bulbs, shrubs, evergreens and fruit trees. With many garden centres getting behind campaigns like the HTA’s ‘Plan it, Plant it this Autumn’ it seems to have helped make people aware of the opportunities to be had. This has almost certainly helped contribute to the strong outdoor plant figures seen by many of our members.

World record holder to speak at our annual conference

We are pleased to announce that David Thomas, who broke the world record for reciting the maths formula Pi (3.14..) to 22,500 digits, will be speaking at our annual conference on Monday, January 26.

Members invited to compete for the Worrall Cup

We are inviting our members to put their marketing campaigns to the test and compete for the chance to win the Worrall Cup.

The cup will be awarded to the garden centre that has the best marketing campaign or initiative during our annual conference in January (2015).

Headline sponsors for our conference revealed

We are pleased to announce that Scotts and Westland Horticulture will be the headline sponsors for our annual conference taking place in January next year (2015).

Scotts is a leading producer and marketer of products for do it yourself lawn care and gardening and Westland Horticulture is a market leader in garden and environmental products.

Early birds can catch a discount for our conference

We’re giving our members a chance to take advantage of an early bird discount when they book their place at our annual conference this month (November, 2014).

Anyone who books to attend the conference before November 30 will benefit from a 10% reduction in price for the event, which takes place in Chester in January (2015).