Sunshine, rain, and a cool breeze… all important parts of the growing process, and good friends of most growers, farmers, and backyard gardeners. But when it comes to garden centers, there are a few exceptions—including summer days with blazing sunshine, winter days with heavy snowfall, or stormy weather that can keep customers from coming by to shop. Fortunately, there is a solution: covered shopping.

By putting a solid roof over the heads of your customers, you can protect your shopping area through every season. That means you can provide an inviting, comfortable shopping experience for your guests all year round.

Providing Coverage from the Worst of Seasonal Weather

Worried that heavy winter snow might tamp down your garden center’s opportunities for sales in the cold season? A solid, reliable covering can work wonders, preventing snowfall from blanketing your shopping area and keeping your plants, products, and people protected from winter’s worst.

Scared that the sizzling summer sun will fry your delicate flowers, plants, or customers? Outfit your garden center covering with white or bronze polycarbonate and you’ll have a nice, cool, and shady covering to keep your shopping area out of direct sunlight and perfectly hospitable for your most important shoppers.

Making The Most of The Year’s Shopping Opportunities

As most garden center owners know all too well, some of the best times of year for shopping are also the most at risk of poor weather. Whether it’s right at the start of summer in late April and early May, or in the height of the Christmas season in mid-to-late December, these are the times of year when all-too-many garden centers struggle to bring in customers.

With a covered shopping area, you can change all that—and turn these dead zones into lively shopping opportunities for your customers. A covered shopping area makes it easy to outfit your sales floor with hardy cold-weather plants like evergreen trees and wreaths for the holiday season, and give you space to house freshly-sprouted plants during those crucial times in May.

Best of all, a covering over your garden center can help significantly regulate the temperature of your shopping area, helping to reduce the chance of frost on especially cold days to keep your plants lively and looking great.

An Efficient Solution with Rapid Return On Investment

When it comes to protecting your garden center from the elements, few solutions provide a better return on investment than a simple covering for your shopping area.

First off, there’s simple cost savings: building out a fully-heated, protected greenhouse space with walls and electricity can be a great investment for some businesses, but will inevitably bring a slightly higher price tag up front. For garden centers worried about cost right now, this may not be the best option—but adding a covering, on the other hand, can often be a much more affordable option that provides similar results.

Plus, there’s an inherent benefit to covered shopping that can help garden centers recover the costs spent on the covering—and the some—within just a few months. By unlocking access to year-round shopping, especially during times of the year when other garden centers have to stop operations due to poor weather or low temperatures, you can keep welcoming guests in with a comfortable shopping experience.

As a retail business, your garden center staff is working hard all the time… but you can’t just do the same old, same old and expect great results. When you keep changing things up and making things better and better—as, for example, when you add a solid covering to your shopping area—you set your garden center up for success not just this year, but in all future years to come.