The green market is flourishing

Between July 2002 and July 2003 the 45 garden centre groups in Germany included here increased their combined retail area from 4.02 mio m² to 4.17 mio m², although two operators, ASB and Pluta, are no longer included in our survey. These figures translates into growth of 3.7 per cent, which is far higher than the previous year’s result of 1.3 per cent. Since the combined retail area of all the garden centres under consideration covered just 3.48 mio m² as recently as July 1999, a figure of nearly 20 per cent floorspace growth emerges for the last four years.
Branches of Germany garden center chains(download pdf-file)
The types of outlet covered in the survey were straight garden centre chains, garden centres attached to DIY stores, and garden centres owned by members of franchise groups or cooperatives. One-off independents were not taken into consideration.
Garden centre chains
The combined retail area of the garden centre chains in the survey comes to 919.995 m². Almost half of this total is for the account of Dehner, which now operates 89 branches, three more than one year ago. The company, which currently has a workforce in excess of 4 900, achieved overall sales of 558 mio euro (including mail-order plants and flowers) in the 2002 financial year, resulting in an increase of 5.5 per cent. The focus of its operations is quite clearly on the south of Germany, followed at some distance by Rhineland-Palatinate, Hesse and Saxony, though the company also has six branches in Austria. Two more outlets will be added in Germany by spring 2004.
Combined retail area of the Top 20 in Germany(download pdf-file)
Nordharz, Meckelburg, Pflanzen-Kölle and Blumen Risse are all chains that managed to open one new garden centre each during the period under consideration, and Pflanzen-Kölle’s new outlet in Wildau is to follow in autumn 2003. A new addition is Kirchner, which has taken a lease on two ASB/Heidi home and garden stores in Leutkirch and Wangen now that ASB has ended its involvement in the garden centre scene.
It would be premature to underestimate the activities of the garden centre chains, some of which are involved in related areas as well. One example is Pflanzen-Kölle, which notched up gross sales of no less than 118 mio euro in 2001/2002 and now employs a workforce of approx. 1 100. Blumen Risse presumably had far higher sales, since it operates 13 flower superstores and more than 130 specialist flower shops in addition to its ten garden centres, with a total of…