What garden centres around the world can learn from each other

Hort Journal Australia · AU|Article|12 May 2026

What garden centres around the world can learn from each other

Written by Dries Jansen, Sid Raisch and John Stanley for the Australian market, this article opens with the observation that garden centres are places of routine and ritual, deeply rooted in local life — and yet customer behaviour looks more familiar the further you look across borders. It sets out the perspective Fred de Rijcke and Dries Jansen developed through Garden Center Advice's work in Europe, North America and the Middle East: the first moments inside a store are decisive, and visitors judge light, scale and movement before they notice any product. The middle of the piece is about method — turnover means little on its own, and only becomes useful alongside floor space, location and surrounding population. Data mining across those sets reveals small mismatches between space and performance, and striking similarities between centres that appear to have nothing in common. It closes on three questions any centre can ask itself: does the whole still make sense, do space, assortment and service reinforce each other, and would the shop feel intuitive to a first-time visitor?

http://hortjournal.com.au/2026/05/what-garden-centres-around-the-world-can-learn-from-each-other/