Exhibitors on the floor expressed mixed views over whether the garden and leisure show should have reverted to its original Sunday to Tuesday format this year. 

Pet food company, Natures Menu, won a hat-trick of awards on the first day of PATS Harrogate at the inaugural PetQuip Industry Awards, held last weekend. The raw food specialists won the Supplier of the Year award and earlier picked up PATS New Product Showcase awards in both the cat and dog categories, too. 

Homewares retailer Dunelm has reported a pre-tax profit figure of £108.1m for the 52 weeks to the end of June 2013, a rise of 12.3% against the same period last year. It added that it has also seen an 80% growth in multichannel revenues; this now represents over 4% of the total business. 

Wickes has renewed its sponsorship with TalkSport, the world's biggest sports radio station, for another year. 

The Garden Centre Group has acquired the Garden & Leisure Group from Louis Delhaize, which also owns leading French garden centre group Truffaut. 

The Garden Centre Association (GCA) has revealed the location of its next annual conference and the winners of its 'guess the venue competition'. 

Home Retail Group has reported sales at Homebase in Q2 rose by 9.3% to £400m and like-for-like sales climbed 11%, compared to just 1.4% in Q1 of this year. It's being reported as the retailer's strongest performance in over a decade. 

Next has revealed that it has planning permission to open 11 more of its large format Fashion, Home and Garden stores, as it reports robust sales figures for the first half of this year. 

In the first six months of this year, the John Lewis Partnership achieved a "robust" sales growth with gross sales recorded at £4.73bn, a rise of 7.3% against the same period last year. The company's profit took a blow, however, due to a large payout of missed holiday payments. 

Notcutts has announced that it is in talks to sell its Horningsea, near Cambridge, garden centre to Scotsdales. 

Speedy, the provider of equipment rental and support services to the construction industry, has consolidated its three Liverpool stores for the launch of a new superstore in the city. 

The heatwave in recent months gave Kingfisher's businesses the boost it needed after a difficult first quarter and resulted in a fairly flat performance across the board. 

Entry to Cultivation Street, the nationwide competition launched by television gardener David Domoney to find Britain's best floral street, is now closed. 

Consumer confidence is on the up - but far more households are worried now about their finances than they were a year ago. 

Screwfix has launched its first show dedicated to trade and DIY, 'Screwfix Live', with more than 120 suppliers exhibiting at Farnborough Five this month. 

Poundland has been given the go-ahead to build a new-state-of-the-art distribution centre in Harlow, Essex. 

A Worcestershire B&Q store suffered tens of thousands of pounds' worth of damage during a burglary last week. 

A West Midlands ironmonger's has closed its doors for the last time, having been trading for more than 100 years. 

Homebase has launched an innovative online shopping initiative offering customers deals on specially selected products, the final price being determined by the number of people who sign up to the deal. 

Multi-award-winning Devon garden centre Fermoy's has kick-started plans for a major re-development and expansion of its business.