Lethbridge garden centres experience boom in summer sales amid COVID-19

While many businesses may have seen a decline in profits due to the pandemic, garden centres in Lethbridge say business has never been better.

As the summer winds down and it starts preparations for the fall and winter seasons, Green Haven Garden Centre is very pleased with the way the summer season went.

“It turned out better than we expected,” said co-owner Karen Barby. “The weather was very co-operative and customers were just so wonderful.”

Despite having to follow extra stringent guidelines due to COVID-19, Barby said a lot of new customers were eager to get their hands dirty to start new gardening projects.

“The interest in gardening has been wonderful,” she said. “We definitely helped a lot of people answering problems with things, if there were some insects or things like that.”

Like many other businesses, Green Haven offered curbside pickup as the main method of sales before being able to open doors to the public in May — and it has been busy ever since.

“For the summer months, we’re probably up about 20 per cent over last summer for sure,” said Barby.

For Erich Dyck, owner of Country Blooms Garden Centre, this year was the busiest he’s ever experienced in his nearly 40-year career.

“The fact that we had lineups at the door was just bizarre,” he said. “We’ve had a significant increase in sales this year, more than any other year.”

He added he would like to use COVID-19 policies as a guideline for how they do things in the future.

“From a retail point of view and a customer point of view, it was a very smooth transition,” he said.

Country Blooms said it will be up and running for another couple of weeks before closing for the winter at the end of the month.

It plans to reopen in March 2021.

Green Haven is open all year, and Barby said they are hopeful autumn and winter see similar success.