OPINION: How we’re preparing for Easter and the warm weather

Business isn’t that bad at the moment – a bit of decent weather has opened everyone up, more people are going out and they’re coming into the shop. Good weather really does help.

Mother’s Day went well for us, we got rid of all the flowers and most of the chocolates too. We’ll do the same at Easter – we won’t go overboard, but we’ll get some Easter eggs in. I see Asda have been advertising they’ll have 21million Easter eggs, we’ll be a bit behind that.

But one of the girls likes doing displays and that kind of thing, so we’ve done something for that.

Easter is early this year, which doesn’t make a huge difference, but the school holidays are split into two – they’re having a few days off for Easter, then back to school then another few days off. That makes it a little bit more difficult for planning.

We’ve just finished selling wood and coal, which was still going because of the recent cold weather, but now we’ve also got people asking about compost.

We’ve got grow-bags in, which is a big expense and they take a lot of space, as they’re bulky items. I’m going to look at doing plants again this year, we used to do a lot and we’re hoping it will add a bit of colour.