GCA column: 60 not out

As we are settling into 2026 now, it is a great time to look forward and plan for the year ahead, while also reflecting on our performance in 2025. Our Garden Centre Association (GCA) Barometer of Trade figures show that for December, catering performed well once again, being up by 6.83% when compared to the same month in 2024, as well as being by about 8% up for the year as a whole. Food halls and farm shops also did well for our members, being up by 9.5% for the month, and also 8% up for the whole year.

It has been very pleasing to see most areas showing growth in a year when the fantastic spring weather would historically only have provided a big uplift to the gardening categories. It is clear that our customers do like to shop all parts of the garden centre when they visit.

One area that showed a small shortfall in December was houseplants. Discussions I have had with garden centre operators suggest that there was a tendency for our customers to buy food rather than a houseplant as a gift. It will be interesting to see if this continues into this year.

The trend of increasing sales in garden centres has also carried on this year, which bucks the declining sales that appear to be affecting the rest of retail. In fact, according to a recent Barclays report on card spending, garden centres showed both sales and customer numbers as increasing in December, when almost all other retail was in negative territory.

The nice thing about the new year for the GCA is that we hold our annual conference. It is the largest event in our calendar, bringing together almost 400 of our members to enjoy each other’s company while discussing current events and future plans, as well as hearing from a number of excellent speakers. 2026 is also our 60^th anniversary year, so it was an extra special event.

We started on the Monday with a fantastic presentation from Edoardo Bortolato on artificial intelligence (AI). He did a small piece on the huge potential for this, then presented ideas for IT improvements that could be made in businesses today. These included ways to save costs, improve stock control, and reduce shrinkage and retail crime, as well as help with customer service. There are a lot of simple and not expensive AI solutions out there that we could all be using now.

We then heard from Kat Thorne, whose presentation was entitled The Morning Game Changer. This encouraged us to look at little habits we have, or just ways that we do things that we might change. These changes could then benefit our own wellbeing, as well as set us up to be much more efficient with our work and teams. If you think about these in the morning, it sets you up for a good day.

The highlight of day one was hearing the great retail guru Mary Portas OBE. She gave her thoughts on the future of retail and how garden centres might benefit.

The Tuesday began with some economic analysis by two gentlemen from HSBC. Chris Hare talked about the global economy and how this was affecting the UK. He was followed by James Sawley giving an overview and a few predictions on how the country’s economy could fare this year.

We then heard from Tamsin Edwards, a climate scientist who was able to give her views on how the weather might affect the horticultural industry. It’s nice to have the views of a scientist rather than someone pushing their own views.

The event concluded with the irrepressible Gyles Brandreth talking about the seven secrets of happiness, and it’s fair to say laughing is definitely a good tonic to most of life’s ills. That’s my new year’s resolution!

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