Too hot for gardening

The weather has really taken its toll on the French garden market this year, leading to a drop in turnover. The French national meteorological service would probably see things differently, however: it was not the weather, but the climate that was (partly) to blame for the decline. The hottest summer since records began in 1900 was “a summer virtually impossible without climate change”, according to the official analysis of the data.

In concrete terms, this meant that in France, spring was 1.7 degrees and summer 3.6 degrees warmer than the long-term average. A total of 53 days of high temperatures were recorded across three heatwaves, whilst rainfall was more than 40 per cent below normal in summer and more than 30 per cent below normal in spring.

In turn, this meant that the French garden centre market contracted by 1.4 per cent in the first eight months compared with the same period last year. Its market volume stood at EUR 5.8 bn (including VAT).

These figures were presented by the two garden centre and DIY store associations, JAF and FMB (Fédération des Jardineries et Animaleries de France and Fédération des Magasins de Bricolage et de l’Aménagement de la Maison), at a joint conference in Paris. In a survey conducted in collaboration with the L’obosco Institute, they asked consumers who had not purchased any plants or gardening products in the previous 30 days about their reasons for doing so. The main reason from July to September was the weather. However, a lack of budget was also consistently cited – with monthly fluctuations – by around 20 per cent of those surveyed.

Apart from the weather, the economic conditions were also cited at the conference in Paris as further negative factors: the inflation rate, forecast at 3 per cent this year, and declining purchasing power, with the result that the French spend just 6.36 euros on their gardens out of every EUR 1,000; in Germany the figure is EUR 13.69, and the EU average is EUR 8.78.

The decline in turnover in the garden market is distributed very…