Woodlodge has expanded its flagship Heritage Garden range of classic containers, offering retailers additional opportunity to drive sales of pots and containers this spring.

The Heritage Garden line-up, an iconic range with proven sales appeal, is inspired by traditional horticulture and the nation’s love of gardens. It is one of the most instantly recognisable brands of prestigious containers, combining classic design with contemporary style.

Michael Wooldridge, Managing Director at Woodlodge, said: “Garden centres are reporting strong spring sales, with favourable weather over Easter underpinning retailers’ confidence in the season. We know that our flagship Heritage Garden Pottery range is highly regarded by consumers, and expansion of the range for 2019 hands retailers the opportunity to further grow sales, with new lines that appeal to shoppers of all ages.”

Tudor Terracotta Pots sporting the Heritage Garden Pottery logo will up the stakes in terms of sales appeal and ability to clock-up impulse sales. Made from the highest quality clay, Tudor pots offer the potential to create a timeless display in any garden space. Their classy design holds broad appeal across a wide spectrum of customers - from traditional shoppers looking for terracotta to enhance mature gardens, to first-time consumers seeking stylish pots for urban entertaining areas.

In an exciting move to help build Glee’s ongoing relationships with consumer media and their readers, it has been confirmed that Grow Your Own magazine will once again be bringing its annual Great British Growing Awards to Glee 2019.

Having hosted the ceremony to critical acclaim at Glee 2018, following a move from their previous home at the Edible Gardening Show, the Great British Growing Awards is back! These awards recognise all that is great within the gardening industry – from tool companies, to seed suppliers, garden writers to fruit nurseries and everything in between, as well as garden volunteers and community growing spaces. 

This year, the awards will be supported by a panel of industry stalwarts making up the judging panel, including Katie Lane (Lavender & Leeks), Rob Smith, Charles Dowding, Will Livingstone, and the GYO team.  In an exciting move, the winners of the 21 categories for the 2019 awards will not be announced until the exhibition itself, making it an even more thrilling prospect for nominees and the wider market.

The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) his showcasing an exciting new fine fragrance at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show this week. Electric Rhubarb has been produced in partnership with Floral Street, an innovative British company producing contemporary floral fragrances.

Electric Rhubarb packaging will feature the Floral Street and RHS logos against the background of a fabulous and colourful flower mural created exclusively for Floral Street by leading London photographer Matthew Donaldson. The Electric Rhubarb packaging will include the words: “For the sparkling, luminous, fun-loving and charming”. This fragrance is part of an extensive range of Floral Street fine fragrances.

Secure your bike, garden shed, allotment, garage – in fact just about anything with this smart padlock operated via his smartphone doing away with fiddly keys and long code combinations introducing the Bluetooth Lock.

The accompanying app features military-grade protection and can be used to grant remote access to friends, family and even couriers so you never miss another delivery.

Garden Connect has renewed the webshop of wholesaler Provender  Nurseries. Provender has an 18-acre site in Kent and is working solely for wholesale customers. Garden Connect has built a new webshop for trade customers to place orders. The new webshop is integrated with the TopSys-IT ERP system.

Provender Nurseries has been using a webshop for years: "We're growing fast and our customers really like to have all the information about availability, our stock range and pricing, available 24/7. Our previous webshop was outdated and not integrated with our TopSys ERP so it was a time-consuming process to update it." explains MD Richard McKenna.  
 

With catering and food sales continuing to offer major add-on profit opportunities for garden centres, leading garden trade show Glee (10th – 12th September, NEC Birmingham), will be offering retailers extensive inspiration at the newly introducedTaste Village.   

This new Taste Village will provide food and catering suppliers - particularly smaller brands, niche suppliers and start-ups - with the opportunity to participate and exhibit as part of a larger group. 

Offering exclusive exhibition packages, exhibitors within the Taste Village will be able to enjoy an enhanced shell stand exhibition space, a listing within the Glee website and the show’s dedicated preview and catalogue. The close proximity of the Taste Village to the show’s leading feature, the Retail Lab, will also mean great footfall from a range of buyers and key decision makers from a wide range of independent and multiple garden centres.

The high winds at the end of March have blown in some good news for the UK’s leading manufacturer of domestic garden fence panels, Forest Garden, who have reported a 60% increase in demand.

The company was easily able to cope with this sudden boost in sales as it holds in excess of 375,000 panels at its facilities in rural Worcestershire.

“We keep a careful watch on weather forecasts as strong winds often herald a sudden peak in demand and we have to be ready,” says Forest Garden’s head of marketing, Nicola Simpson.  “The challenge is getting deliveries out of the door to our customers.  We deliver 7,000 loads to store each year, that up to 90 loads a day, and this can increase substantially following gales.”

Leading garden tool supplier, WOLF-Garten, has donated a selection of high-quality tools to NHS staff for their communal garden, which is used to relax in after difficult call-outs.

The Chelmsford Ambulance Station, in Essex, reached out to the company asking for tool donations after it created a large pond and garden area late last year. The space is used by around 200 staff who work for the service.

To regenerate and expand the garden, staff were needing first-class, reliable tools to undertake basic daily tasks, such as weeding, planting and pond cleaning.

Emergency medical technician, Stuart Wilkinson, who has worked at the station for over five years has been at the forefront of this campaign. He also helped build the outdoor area at the station during his time on leave with PTSD.

Leading garden tools and accessories supplier E. P. Barrus has expanded its merchandising team to meet demand as the business continues to grow.

The latest recruit to the team is James Utton, who joins E. P. Barrus with years of experience in garden centre retail. James said: “I’m delighted to be part of the merchandising team at Barrus where I will be looking after the South East region of the UK. I have enjoyed my few weeks getting to know the business and the rest of the team have been a great help. Coming from a garden centre in my previous role has given me additional experience in setting up products in store and made me aware of the high level of service Barrus provides.”

The highly trained merchandising team at E. P. Barrus have developed strong relationships with its customers and play a crucial role in supporting retailers with a professional, flexible merchandising service.

Lawncare is a breeze with DJ Turfcare’s MO Bacter – the innovative organic lawn fertiliser that effortlessly tackles moss and banishes labour-intensive scarifying

Flick through the pages of gardening magazines at this time of year and chances are they’ll feature a step-by-step guide on getting lawns into shape. While some lawncare products have evolved beyond recognition in recent years, gardeners are still being advised to kill moss with sulphate of iron, then set about ripping dead moss from grass via the back-breaking process of scarification or hand raking.

Not only is this route to a greener lawn labour intensive, in an era when consumers are demanding easy and chemical-free gardening solutions, but it’s also unnecessary. Sulphate of iron turns moss black, which can make lawns look unsightly. If applied without care, it can damage border plants and stain patios and garden furniture. And that’s before the mammoth task of grabbing a lawn rake and pulling dead moss from the turf which, if carried out before the moss is completely dead, you can actually spread moss spores and make the situation worse as sulphate of iron is only a contact killer.