Every September the garden trade gathers at the NEC in Birmingham for Glee, the industry's main trade show. It is where suppliers show next year's products to the people who will be selling them, which makes it a useful window into what your garden centre, and your neighbours' gardens, will look like in twelve months.
This year's show ran from 8 to 10 September and, for the first time, sat alongside Autumn Fair. We went to look, to listen, and to decide what deserves a place in our range.
The Garden as Another Room
If there was one theme, it was that the industry has stopped treating the garden as something you look at and started treating it as somewhere you live. A whole area of the show was given over to fire, cooking and outdoor leisure. Outdoor kitchens, pizza ovens, fire pits, heaters and proper furniture are no longer side lines. A modular kitchen such as the Grillandia Rare would have been a rarity a few years ago, and there were whole aisles of the idea.
That matches what we hear from customers. Nobody rings us wanting a roof for its own sake. They want to eat outside in April, or sit out after dark in October, and the roof is how they get there. It is why we now offer outdoor kitchens, pizza ovens and fire pits alongside the structures themselves.
Shade Is Being Taken Seriously
The second thing we noticed was shade. After a run of warm summers, people have realised that a south-facing patio can be too hot to use at exactly the time of year they most want it. Parasols have grown larger and better engineered, and a cantilever such as the Genesis now shades a whole seating group with no pole in the middle of it, and there is far more interest in fixed shade than there used to be.
A parasol is a fine answer for an afternoon. For a terrace you use every day, a retractable awning such as the Cassita II, fixed to the house, does the same job at the touch of a button and disappears when you do not need it. We added a full range of awnings in August, and the mood at Glee suggested we were not a moment too early.
Buying Once and Buying Well
The third theme was quieter and, to us, the most encouraging. There was noticeably less throwaway product and more emphasis on things built to last, to be repaired and to be added to over time. That is how we have always thought an outdoor structure should be bought. A good aluminium veranda such as the Giallo should be something you add glass doors, lighting and blinds to over the years, not something you replace.
What It Means for You
We did not come home with a van full of novelties. We came home clearer about three things: that people want complete outdoor spaces and not single products, that shade deserves as much attention as shelter, and that quality is back in fashion.
All three are shaping what we add to the range next. If you are planning a project for next spring, now is a good time to start the conversation, while there is time to think it through properly.
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