How to Create Better Social Media Content to Drive Footfall to Your Garden Centre in Summer
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Summer is the season garden centres live for. The longer days, the warmth, and a collective urge to get outdoors combine to put your products front of mind for millions of shoppers. Yet footfall is no longer automatic. UK garden centre visits reached 203 million in 2024, and over two-thirds of adults say they visited at least once that year ,with leisure options multiplying and consumers increasingly selective about where they spend their time, getting people through the gate requires active effort. Social media, used strategically, is one of the most powerful tools available to garden retailers right now. Here is how to make it work harder for your business this summer.
What Platforms Should Garden Centres Be Prioritising?
The instinct is often to be everywhere at once. In practice, spreading resource too thinly produces thin results. For most garden centres, the most productive platforms in 2026 are Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, each serving a distinct purpose.
Instagram remains the natural home for aspirational outdoor living content. The visual nature of your offer, flowering borders, premium garden furniture and, well-styled outdoor dining displays, translates directly to the grid and to Reels. An Instagram post with at least one hashtag generates, on average, a third more user engagement, and geotagging your location ensures that local users searching your area will surface your content in their feeds.
TikTok demands a different mindset but rewards it generously. UK users spend an average of 49 hours and 29 minutes per month on TikTok's Android app, more than double the time spent on YouTube and triple the time on Facebook. Short, authentic videos showcasing plant arrivals, behind-the-scenes nursery tours, or quick summer growing hacks perform particularly well. The platform's younger demographic also matters: a poll by Drapers found that 54% of 18–24 year olds would rather go to a garden centre than a nightclub, and TikTok is the app where they discover where to go.
Facebook remains valuable for an older, established customer base and for promoting events, workshops, and food hall specials to a community audience that is already loyal and local.
What Kind of Content Actually Drives People In-Store?
The gap between content that gets likes and content that drives footfall is where many garden centres lose momentum. The key principle is this: show people something worth making a journey for.
Video outperforms static imagery across every platform. According to Wyzowl, 84% of people say they have been convinced to purchase a product after watching a brand's video. For garden centres, this creates enormous opportunity. Time-lapse footage of displays being built, point-of-view tours of new season arrivals, or a 60-second Reel showing off your outdoor living area with summer furniture and a loaded BBQ station, these are the formats that stop the scroll and prompt the visit.
Food is one of the most powerful drivers of footfall right now, and it deserves its own social strategy. If your centre has a café, farm shop, or food hall, those spaces should be visible and celebrated across your channels. GCA Barometer of Trade data shows catering and food hall sales were up 19% and 15% respectively in June 2024 compared to the same month in 2023, a clear signal that food is increasingly the reason people visit, not just a convenience once they are there. Showcasing seasonal menus, summer specials, or garden café scenes on Instagram and Facebook directly positions your centre as a destination rather than a shop.
Sustainability content also performs strongly, particularly with younger audiences. Posts highlighting your peat-free ranges, native planting selections, or environmental initiatives connect with a growing customer segment that chooses where to shop based on shared values. This is not a one-off Earth Day consideration; it is a year-round positioning opportunity.
How Can User-Generated Content Build Trust and Bring New Visitors?
@.aimetoi this is my idea of a very nice day out🐝 #gardencentre #girlhood #spring #relatable #needthis #sweettreat #fyp ♬ For The Summer, Or Forever - Halftribe
One of the most underused assets in garden centre marketing is the content your customers are already creating. When a visitor photographs a beautiful border display, an impressive outdoor living setup, or a Sunday morning coffee in your café garden, and shares it with their own followers, that reach is both authentic and free.
@bababouttown This might just be one of the best garden centres in the West Midlands… and it’s only a 10-minute drive from Sutton Coldfield! @coppicelifestyle - Coppice Lane, Tamworth 📍 A premium garden centre featuring a farm shop, restaurant, botanical heaven and plenty more. Inside, you’ll find some amazing brands alongside local makers, including the much-loved @baker_sebastian_clough from OnTheBreadLine now serving his incredible cakes and breads. Forage is the incredible farm shop there and I often buy some of my meat from - lamb burgers are 👌👌 There are also cool independents like @secret.wardrobe.preloved selling luxury designer goodies such as Chanel and Prada, plus lifestyle services like hairdressers, Pilates, etc! From flowers and children’s toys to birthday gifts and stylish homeware, the lifestyle shopping is gorgeous and yes they have a good @jellycat selection! Don’t forget to stop by @thefigatcoppice for a cooked breakfast, lunch, or afternoon tea — it’s such a lovely spot to relax and unwind. Car parking available. No dogs allowed at the moment — (but we hope this changes soon 🐾). Price: ££ #WestMidlands #GardenCentre #dayout #SuttonColdfield #Birminghambakery ♬ lovers’ carvings - Bibio
Bazaarvoice's Shopper Preference Report 2025 found that 30% of UK shoppers have bought a product based on recommendations from a creator, and the same research found that 41% of UK shoppers look for more reviews before buying, which means trust signals from real customers carry significant weight. Encouraging customers to tag your centre, share a branded hashtag, or enter a summer photo competition generates a stream of organic content that expands your reach into audiences you would otherwise never reach.
@justhummyw A gorgeous day at Melbicks Garden Centre 📍B46 3HY #birminghamdaysout #birminghamgardencentre #westmidlandsfarmshop #westmidlandscafe #afternoonteabirmingham ♬ Our Love Was Beautiful - Instrumental Version - Straight White Teeth
Practically, this can be as simple as placing a subtle prompt near an attractive display or at your café entrance, inviting people to share their visit. Staff can reshare the best posts to Stories, which adds a personal touch and signals to other visitors that their content will be seen and valued. This community loop, post, reshare, encouragement, is one of the most cost-effective marketing tools available to independent garden retailers.
How Can AI Help Garden Centres Manage Social Media More Efficiently?
For centres stretched on staff time, the prospect of maintaining consistent, high-quality social media output can feel daunting. AI is changing that calculation. AI tools now allow marketing teams to scale content output without increasing workload, generating drafts for posts, product descriptions, and event copy in seconds, while scheduling platforms mean posts can go live at optimal times without anyone needing to be at a desk.
Garden Centre Retail notes that many centres find traditional marketing methods no longer deliver the same impact, and that weather-responsive marketing, timely posts or emails that align with planting windows or seasonal trends, is one of the most effective ways to capture demand at the right moment. AI tools can help automate this: monitoring weather forecasts and triggering pre-written content at the right time, so that when the sun arrives after a cloudy week, your BBQ range or outdoor furniture offer is already in people's feeds.
The caveat worth noting: authenticity matters enormously to garden centre customers. 53% of social media users in the UK are worried about brands using AI in their social media advertising. The most effective approach is to use AI to support and accelerate human-led content, not to replace the genuine personality and local knowledge that makes independent garden retail compelling.
How Do Social Media Events and Workshops Convert Followers Into Visitors?
Events are the bridge between your online community and your physical footfall. Summer offers an abundance of natural hooks: outdoor planting workshops, BBQ evenings in the garden, floral arrangement sessions, kids' gardening activities during school holidays. Promoting these through social media, particularly through Facebook Events and Instagram Stories countdown stickers, builds anticipation and creates a direct, measurable reason for people to visit on a specific date.
Industry analysis confirms that experiential activity drives incremental spend, increases dwell time, and creates new product tie-ins, while events also help to stabilise footfall patterns that can otherwise swing dramatically with the weather. A customer who comes in for a summer planting workshop is a customer who will linger longer, spend more broadly across your categories, and is more likely to return.
Bees Seeds Group MD Carly Jackson articulated the dual opportunity clearly in late 2025: "Many older consumers, including those who may not have visited regularly before, are now drawn in by cafés and lifestyle experiences, creating strong opportunities for impulse purchases. Meanwhile, younger consumers are entering the category in growing numbers, inspired by social media, sustainability and the rise of indoor and small-space growing."
Social media is the mechanism that connects those two audiences to the experiences your centre already offers.
Building a Social Media Strategy That Sustains Itself Beyond Summer
The summer season is a prime opportunity to build an audience that stays with you into autumn and beyond. Every follower gained through a well-timed summer Reel or a shareable event post is a potential customer for your Christmas gifting range, your winter outdoor living offer, or your early spring planting season. Consistency matters more than volume: investing in high-quality photography and short-form video, combined with email that is segmented by interest, remains one of the most effective combinations for driving visits across the year.
Key Takeaways: The Simplest Approach to Start With
With so much competing for attention, it helps to boil summer social strategy down to one simple framework: See it, Want it, Visit.
See it: stop the scroll with seasonal video and visual content
@simpsonsgarden We work in a garden centre, of course we’re going to finish National Gardening Week with some fun 🌸😂🌿 #gardencentre #wework #trend #fyp #gardening #funatwork #inverness #garden #nationalgardeningweek ♬ Come and Get Your Love - Redbone
Lead with video, not static images. A time-lapse of a display going up or a quick tour of your outdoor living area stops the scroll far more effectively than a plain product shot.
Want it: Show a product, experience or event worth leaving home for
@threaplands_gc Who’s is the coolest? 🤔 #gardencenter #scotland #threaplands #gardeninglife #coworkerfun ♬ original sound - Threaplands Garden Centre
Give people a reason to want more than the video itself. Food, sustainability and in-store experiences do the heavy lifting here, so show the actual product, event or space, not generic seasonal messaging.
Visit: Give customers a clear reason and timeframe to come in-store
@morris.of.usk Watch our Deli Project…Episode 1 🫶🏼✨🧀 If you have any ideas of products etc comment them below 💛👇🏼 #foodie #project #southwales #foodblogger #renovation ♬ Edge of Desire - Jonas Blue & Malive
Desire needs a deadline. Countdown stickers, "this weekend only" events, or a clear call to action turn passive interest into an actual trip.
Summary: What to prioritise this summer
- Platform focus: Instagram for aspirational visuals, TikTok for reach and younger shoppers, Facebook for events and your loyal local community.
- Content that converts: video over static, food and café content, sustainability messaging, and real customer photos.
- AI as a support tool, not a substitute: use it to scale output and time posts around the weather, but keep the voice human and local.
- Events as the bridge: workshops and in-store activity turn online followers into paying, lingering customers.
- Consistency over volume: a steady drumbeat of quality content through summer builds an audience that carries into autumn and winter ranges too.
For garden centres looking to sharpen both their social strategy and their product offer for the coming season, Glee Birmingham (8–10 September, NEC Birmingham) is the ideal place to start. Co-located with Autumn Fair as part of Europe's Biggest Buying Moment, Glee brings together wholesale garden suppliers across outdoor living, food and gifting, Garden Luxe, plants, and more. Giving buyers everything they need to build a range worth talking about, and a season worth photographing.