Orders at the group's Gardening Direct and Growing and Live Despatch (GLD) businesses have fallen to £3.8m for the three months up to March 31 2012, compared with £5.5m over the same period last year.


Flying Brands announced the completion of the sale of Garden Centre Online, Garden Bird Supplies and Listen2 earlier this month; orders for these businesses dropped by £2.1m from £5.3m in 2011 to £3.2m this last quarter.

In a trading update, Flying Brands spoke of the challenges its garden division businesses continued to face. "The gardening industry generally this year has suffered as a result of a combination of poor weather and the continuing uncertain consumer outlook. In addition, we and our principal competitors have suffered as a result of the abolition of Low Value Consignment Relief earlier this year.

"We believe that the resulting increase in prices did have the effect of reducing demand and we, along with most of our competitors, have had to respond by reducing prices in the latter half of the season."

The group, which announced plans to sell Gardening Direct recently, added that its restructuring programme to cut overheads was "proceeding according to plan," and that discussions continued with prospective buyers for the retailer.

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