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When is a garden centre still a garden centre?

Analyse · mei 2026 · 4 min

Every acquisition in the sector gets explained as consolidation. That is true enough, but it is the least interesting part of the story. The question underneath is more fundamental: what do we actually call a garden centre today?

The seasonal logic is gone

The classic garden centre is built on a sum that worked for years. A plant business that made 60 to 70 per cent of its annual turnover in three spring months covered its costs for the rest of the year with it. That reality no longer exists.

Costs have become year-round: staff, energy, property, marketing. But so have consumer expectations. That asks not only for a broader range, it asks for lasting relevance across twelve months instead of three.

Not erosion, but redefinition

What we are seeing is not the garden centre being hollowed out. Plants remain the base, they are simply no longer the only reason to exist. Home, pet, Christmas, catering, services and care concepts are logical extensions of that base. Not because they have to be, but because it is the only way to mean something all year round.

That makes the term garden centre too narrow. Retailers with a green base differ from one another far more than the sector classification suggests. The spectrum runs from sharply focused plant specialists, through lifestyle and home concepts, to full destinations where garden, pet, catering and care come together.

The question is not chain or independent

The overarching question is not whether you belong to a chain. It is whether you manage to create a place where people like to spend time. A place to unwind, to find inspiration and to meet others, in a setting that holds together. That people take products home from it is logical, but as far as we are concerned it is secondary.

Retail follows experience, not the other way round.

In that light, scale is not a goal in itself but one of the possible answers. Larger chains have advantages in investment power, digitalisation and professionalisation. But there are plenty of individual garden centres doing exceptionally well, precisely through cooperation, specialisation and a willingness to let each other win. Regional strength and a signature of your own turn out to be at least as future-proof.

What it means for your floor

In practical terms it comes down to this: if turnover can no longer come from three months, you need to know which metres carry the other nine. That is a different question from which department is the prettiest or the biggest. It is the question of which department gives a reason to walk in all year round, and what those metres return per week.

So the debate is not traditional versus modern, or chain versus independent. It is about relevance and continuity in a changing time. And there is room in that for more than one model. Perhaps that is the sector genuinely coming of age.

Translated from the Dutch original.