Waitrose to unveil gardening and floristry range online and in-store

Waitrose is branching out into the blossoming gardening market, launching a website offering tips on growing your own fruit and flowers, and a new gardening range in store.

With gardening ranked as the second most popular pastime for Waitrose customers after cooking, the upmarket grocer is looking to capitalise on its customers' green fingers and significantly up its 6pc share of the horticulture market.

Next week, the supermarket will launch a gardening and floristry range in shops named Waitrose Flower Garden, offering 850 different flowers and seeds along with 80 gardening products, and a website called Waitrosegarden.com.

Prices will range from £3 to £75 and up to 41 branches will dedicate at least 120 sq ft of outdoor space to the range, including an outdoor gardening 'shed' selling plants and gardening accessories.

The launch comes after Waitrose last month signed up gardener and television presenter, Alan Titchmarsh, to support the supermarket on developing and launching new horticulture and gardening ranges.

He will offer advice on Waitrosegarden.com, sharing tips on how to care for your garden as well as picking his top 50 gardening products for each season. The site will also sell more than 5,000 horticulture products in association with online garden supplier, Crocus.

Waitrose marketing director, Rupert Thomas, said: “We are pleased to be able to offer such an inspirational range of floristry and gardening products. This will make us a serious player in what is already a hugely successful category for us."

Other retailers have sought to tap into the gardening market, which was valued at around £4bn in 2010. Last year, it emerged that Next was considering opening a handful of garden centres after a pilot store proved successful.

Source : Rachel Cooper – The Telegraph
www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/9935758/Green-fingered-Waitrose-launches-gardening-range.html