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A trend costs square metres first

TuinZaken 7, 2026 · 20 augustus 2026 · 3 min

While the Christmas show is going up, the orders for spring and summer 2027 are already on the table. August is when the range is fixed, and with it the shop floor of next spring. Yet one question is rarely asked: how many metres is this trend actually worth?

Because a trend is not a product. It is a claim on space, for a set period. And space is the scarce good in a garden centre.

What a season costs in metres

In our European Garden Centre Benchmark (edition 2026-06, 54 European locations belonging to 8 independent owners, 243,582 m² of sales floor between them) one ratio stands out. Seasonal plants and the theme departments, so Christmas, Easter and other themes, together take up 16.5% of the sales floor and deliver 7.3% of turnover. That is the widest gap between metres and turnover in the whole set.

of the floor 16.5%

of turnover 7.3%

For Christmas that is a deliberate choice. A short peak, a lot of visitors, and those visitors carry the rest of the store with them. So the point is not that the ratio is skewed, but that almost nobody costs it out. And that spring and summer ranges get the same treatment, only without the discipline the Christmas department does have: a start date, an end date and a plan for taking it down.

The range is not where the difference sits

Another figure from the same set. In garden furniture, the middle half of the locations runs from € 420 to € 1,102 turnover per m² per year. A factor of 2.6, and the outliers at both ends have already been removed. While the brands, the models and the trend colours in those stores are largely the same.

For anyone heading off on a buying trip, that is an uncomfortable conclusion. The range itself does not explain the difference. The space it gets, and the time it keeps that space, do.

The range itself does not explain the difference. The space it gets does.

Put a clock on the trend

Christmas works because it has a term. Spring and summer last six months and in many stores get a single set-up that stands from March to September. A series of small collections of six to eight weeks works better, each with one customer job as its promise:

• balcony and small terrace in April
• drought and heat in May
• bees and biodiversity in June
• shade and cooling in July

Each block is small, concrete and explained, and the end date is fixed in advance. The customer learns that something at your place keeps changing. That is why they come back in May, and that repeat visit carries the spring season.

So measure such a block by the week, not by the season. The median location in our set turns over € 717 per m² per year, roughly € 14 per m² per week. That is the bar. A 40 m² trend block standing for six weeks therefore has to do around € 3,400 to earn its place, and that is before allowing for the fact that spring metres are worth more than average.

Draw the floor before you order

Decide per block how many metres you free up, how many weeks it stands and which customer job it answers. Then buy against that, in that order. You will buy narrower and deeper, and that usually makes a range stronger.

One caveat about the figures above, because it belongs here. The benchmark does not correct for catchment area and covers one year per location, so a position on the curve is not a report mark. What the figures do show is the ratio between metres and turnover, and that can be steered in almost any store.

So start small. Pick one trend for spring 2027, give it a fixed number of metres and a hard end date, and measure what those metres return per week. That is a more precise answer to whether a trend works than any trend report.

This column first appeared in Dutch in the trade magazine TuinZaken, and is reproduced with the editors' permission. Translated from the Dutch original.