European Garden Centre Benchmark

Garden centre owners compare turnover. Almost nobody compares turnover per square metre per product group. That is the number that decides whether a department earns its place on the floor. This edition puts a figure on it for 33 product groups, based on 22 European locations that report their sales, margin and floor space on one shared taxonomy. The whole-store comparison draws on a wider set of 54 locations from 8 independent operators.

We publish the medians, the spread and the taxonomy itself. What we do not publish is what any of it means for a specific centre: that depends on the market around it, its assortment and its ambition, and it is the work we get paid for. The numbers below are the starting point of that conversation, not the end of it.

Five findings

1. The average garden centre m² earns €832 a year

Across 243,582 m² of benchmarked selling space in 8 countries, turnover works out at €832 per m² per year excluding VAT. The median location sits at €717, lower than the average, because the biggest and most productive locations pull the total up. Use the median when you compare yourself; use the average when you size a market.

2. Between the bottom tenth and the top tenth sits a factor 2.6

The weakest tenth of locations turn over €451 per m². The strongest tenth do €1,160. Same continent, same category, same square metre. Size does not explain it: the largest location in this set (25,170 m²) turns over €708 per m², below the median, while the most productive one does €2,316 on a floor of under 10,000 m².

3. Plants take the floor, decoration and flowers take the till

Outdoor plants (H23.0) occupy the single largest share of floor space of any group, at 16.4% of all benchmarked m², and return 12.3% of turnover. Cut flowers (H03) do the opposite: 1.4% of the floor for 5.2% of turnover. Neither is automatically good or bad: a nursery-led centre buys footfall with its plant area. But a centre that has never seen the ratio cannot know which one it is running.

4. One square metre in six is committed to a season

Christmas, Easter and other themes (H30) take 12.2% of the floor and return 6.3% of turnover, at €471 per m². Seasonal green (H25) adds another 4.3% of floor for 1.0% of turnover, at €218 per m². Together that is 16.5% of all benchmarked selling space earning 7.3% of turnover, the widest gap between floor space and turnover anywhere in the set. For most centres that is a deliberate trade: season builds traffic and the reason to come back. The question is not whether to run it. It is how many metres it should cost, and for how many weeks of the year.

5. Hospitality is not a service, it is a department

Restaurant (H26) turns over €1,611 per m² across 15 locations that report it separately, well above the store average. Centres that still treat hospitality as a cost of doing business are managing one of their strongest earners as an afterthought.

The spread: there is no “normal” garden centre

Every figure in this report is a distribution, not a target. Below is where the 54 locations sit on turnover per m² for the whole store: the bar covers the middle half of the set, the line is the median.

Where the floor goes, and where the turnover comes from

The ten largest groups by floor space, with their share of turnover beside it. Where the green bar is shorter than the blue one, the group is spending more of the store than it brings back. That can be a deliberate choice (destination categories, seasonal traffic) or an accident nobody has measured.

share of floor space share of turnover

The reference table

Turnover per m² per year, excluding VAT, for the 9 groups this report discusses. Median is the middle location; middle half is the range the middle 50% of locations fall in; average is total turnover divided by total floor space for that group; n is the number of locations behind the line.

Margin per m² per group is deliberately not published either. It is the number that turns a benchmark into a decision, and it needs a centre's real purchase data to be worth anything. Across the whole set, margin runs at €377 per m², or 45% of turnover.

Movers since the previous edition

Compared with the previous edition of the benchmark, these groups moved most in turnover per m². Read them with care: the department set grew from 16 to 22 locations between the two editions, so part of every movement is a change in who is in the sample, not a change in the market. We report it anyway, because hiding it would be worse.

Method, taxonomy and limits

What is in the set

• The whole-store comparison: 54 locations from 8 independent operators in 8 countries, each reporting turnover, margin and floor space for the whole store on the rule below.
• The department curves: 22 locations that additionally report every product group separately. Each group line states its own n, which runs from 10 to 20 — not every centre has every group.
• The wider estate: 132 locations in 11 countries whose figures have been through our analysis. That number describes our experience. It is never used for a curve, and no figure in this report rests on it.
• Each location contributes one reporting year. Figures are net of VAT.

Two entries in the set are pet departments analysed on their own, not whole centres. They count on the animal supplies line and nowhere else — a 545 m² pet department is not a garden centre, and averaging it in as one would quietly distort the whole-store figure. That is the rule throughout: a location joins the set for every line where it meets the standard, and no other.

How a square metre is counted

Every location in the set is measured by the same rule, and the free tool asks visitors for exactly the same thing. Comparing differently measured floors is worse than not comparing at all.

• The whole selling area counts: indoor, the outdoor area and the restaurant.
• Offices and the warehouse do not. Space that never sells is not floor a department has to earn back.
• Aisles are split 50/50 between the two product groups on either side, so each group carries its share of the space that makes it reachable.
• Per group, the floor it actually occupies, including that share of the aisles, so the group figures add up to the total selling area.

In our own projects this happens once, on the floor plan: the plan is zoned and every square metre belongs to one group or is split between two.

The H-group taxonomy

Every location is mapped onto the same product groups before anything is compared. Without that step, one centre's "garden furniture" is another's "outdoor living" and the comparison is fiction. The taxonomy is published in full and free to use: the complete list is on the benchmark page. Gaps in the numbering (H02, H04, H05, H08) are groups that were merged into their neighbours as the taxonomy matured; the codes stay fixed on purpose.

What this benchmark cannot do

• It is not a national statistic. No country yet carries both enough locations and enough different operators for a curve of its own — France has the locations but they come from two businesses, which would make it a formula curve wearing a national label. Every figure here is European.
• It does not correct for catchment. A centre in a dense, high-income catchment should out-earn one in a thin rural market. Position on this curve is not performance.
• It does not explain anything. Assortment, layout, pricing, staffing and season all sit behind these numbers and none of them are in the data.
• It is one year per location. Trend statements need the same centres over time, which is what future editions will add.

© 2026 lookINsight B.V. Free to quote and reproduce with attribution: “European Garden Centre Benchmark, edition 2026-06, lookINsight.” Figures generated from the lookINsight benchmark set on 2026-06-30.