Resilience to economic uncertainty

The UK's garden centres are riding on the crest of a wave. While Britain's highstreets are facing economic headwinds that have seen big name retailers consigned to history, garden centres are bucking the trend and experiencing healthy levels of growth. This conclusion comes from the organisers of the British garden trade fair Glee, who have gathered data on the garden market.
According to the Horticultural Trades Association, the UK garden market is worth around GBP 5.7 bn (excluding landscaping and amenity) and business is booming for the UK's 2 300 garden centres and retail nurseries.
The January 2019 issue of HTA Market Update found that garden centre sales were up by 3 per cent in 2018 compared to 2017. Houseplants were star performers, up by 15 per cent year-on-year. Christmas categories saw strong growth in 2018 with December sales 9 per cent up on 2017.
HTA Director of Operations, Martin Simmons said: "HTA members are reporting a healthy start to the year, aided by daily maximum temperatures in February that were the highest on record. Given that the equivalent time last year saw the Beast from the East, no one is under the illusion that comparisons with February 2018 would be fair, but it's a promising start. This is encouraging as we move through an uncertain economic period this season."
Simmons said that in the past, the garden industry has shown some resilience to economic uncertainty: "With a later Mother's Day and Easter this year, and the chance of better weather, there's a possibility that consumers will want a distraction from Brexit."
High footfall and category growth at garden centres is a world away from the crisis that's gripping highstreets. According to an analysis by The Guardian, English and Welsh town centres have lost 8 per cent of their shops on average since 2013.
So why is garden retail thriving at a time when shutters are crashing down in highstreets? Garden centres have evolved to embrace catering, giftware and food halls, reinventing their businesses as leisure destinations that offer a family-friendly shopping experience that's worlds away from the toxic mix of high parking charges, empty retail units and competition from the internet that is blighting town centres across the UK, say the Glee organisers.
According to The Garden Centre Association's Barometer of Trade (BoT), sales of outdoor plants in November 2018 were up by 11.69 per cent compared to the same month in 2017. Mild weather saw hard landscaping sales soar by 13.12…