‘Garden centres being shut for spring has been like losing Christmas for other stores’
CIARAN Burke’s workplace is looking more like a hospital than a garden centre these days. For the past few weeks, Mr Burke, the assistant manager at Johnstown Garden Centre, has taken on a new role as head of the Covid-19 safety team.
“It’s been full-on,” Mr Burke said. “It’s uncharted territory. I suspect we will be very busy, and we’re planning for a worstcase scenario of a lot of people showing up.”
He is bracing for next Monday – May 18 – when garden centres and hardware stores will become the first wave of businesses to open as part of the Government’s five-phase plan to get the country back up and running.
He said it will be a “very different experience” for customers.
There will be no leisurely weekends spent ambling through garden centres.
Queue
Customers will have to queue and, ideally, have a list of what they need.
“Normally, we’d spend a long time chatting to customers and giving them advice. That’s not practical now, with maintaining social distancing,” Mr Burke said.
All this week, he’s been training staff in how to manage queues and avoid clusters of people in popular parts of the store.
Every table, chair and surface that a customer might touch has been sanitised and staff have been trained in how to operate a till with minimum contact.
While garden centres are nervous about reopening, there is a major sense of relief that they can.
“The peak time for all garden centres would be April and May, and in that period of time we have been closed. We’ve missed St Patrick’s weekend, we missed the Easter bank holiday and the May bank holiday,” Mr Burke said.
“In other retail environments, it would be like having Covid-19 shut down your stores for Christmas. That’s how important this time of year is for us.”
Aileen Muldoon Byrne, the owner of the Boyne Garden Centre in Co Meath, said she is worried people will come into the garden centre “like lambs going into a field.
“It’s human nature that people will want to come into the garden centres, and of course we’re glad to see them, but I am a little worried about a lot of people showing up, I have to say,” she said.
Ms Muldoon Byrne added that there is some concern about people bringing children for a “day out”, which could prompt an awkward conversation with their parents.
The garden centre has been inundated with online orders over the past few weeks from customers stuck at home with nothing else to do in the fine weather but work away in the garden.
There have even been some people asking if they could sneak in.
“Jesus, things are way too serious for that,” Ms Muldoon Byrne said.
The centre has had to adapt to click-and-collect and delivery services, which have been a challenge for some of its customers.
“A lot of gardeners tend to be in the older age bracket, or have been traditionally. And for a lot of those people, they are online shopping for the first time,” Ms Muldoon Byrne said.
When she reopens, she will be running dedicated hours for vulnerable shoppers, between 9.30 and 11.30am, on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
Like a lot of plant-based centres, Boyne Garden Centre makes a lot of its money from shows.
Ms Muldoon Byrne would have run about 20 a year, and has taken a hit because of Covid-19.
“It is hitting us on all fronts,” Ms Muldoon Byrne said.
One of the things she will be watching out for is customers who try to hand her their phones.
“People tend to start showing you all the photographs of plants they want, or spaces in their gardens. That has to stop for the time being,” she said.
“We won’t be physically able to stand close to them and we certainly will not be handling their phones.”
In Mullingar, O’Meara’s garden centre has been “torn apart” as Aine O’Meara and her staff try to create three-metre paths ahead of its reopening on May 18.
Her garden centre has also struggled with the closure during its most busy period, and it is also losing out on plants it would normally supply to hotels, pubs and restaurants who no longer need orders.
“They’re ringing you up going, ‘Oh God, I don’t know if we need those 4,000 geraniums’, but I’m going, ‘Look, you’re grand. Relax. We’ll see you next year’,” Ms O’Meara said.
“I suppose in the back of my head, I know I have six weeks now to try and make enough money to pay wages for the winter. We need to try our very best.”
Like many businesses, her staff will struggle to manage childcare and work.
“It’s going to be tough. But, my grandmother told me our family survived the Famine in a cave,” she said.
“Well Jesus, if they can do that, I can survive this.
“So everyone just needs to, I think, chill and proceed like they have been in supermarkets.
“Just remember that we’re all coping with this as best we can.”
‘I am a little worried about a lot of people showing up’