Spaced 2 metres apart, many wearing masks and gloves, customers were queueing outside Chessington garden centre in Surrey at 8am on Wednesday morning, an hour before the doors were allowed to open for the first time in more than seven weeks.
Shoppers eager to snap up geraniums, begonias and tomato plants were greeted by staff wearing plastic visors and followed a new one-way system to allow shoppers to maintain a safe distance from each other. Trolleys were sprayed with disinfectant after use.
The World Health Organization (WHO) guidance on face masks has remained consistent during the coronavirus pandemic. It has stuck to the line that masks are for healthcare workers – not the public.
“Wearing a medical mask is one of the prevention measures that can limit the spread of certain respiratory viral diseases, including Covid-19. However, the use of a mask alone is insufficient to provide an adequate level of protection, and other measures should also be adopted,” the WHO has stated.
Nevertheless, as some countries have eased lockdown conditions, they have been making it mandatory to wear face coverings outside, as a way of trying to inhibit spread of the virus. This is in the belief that the face covering will prevent people who cough and sneeze ejecting the virus any great distance.
There is no robust scientific evidence – in the form of trials – that ordinary masks block the virus from infecting people who wear them. There is also concerns the public will not understand how to use a mask properly, and may get infected if they come into contact with the virus when they take it off and then touch their faces.
Also underlying the WHO’s concerns is the shortage of high-quality protective masks for frontline healthcare workers.
Nevertheless, masks do have a role when used by people who are already infected. It is accepted that they can block transmission to other people. Given that many people with Covid-19 do not show any symptoms for the first days after they are infected, masks clearly have a potential role to play, especially on crowded public transport as people return to work..
Sarah Boseley Health editor
Nevertheless, 75-year-old Roger Bruce, a theatre manager, was upbeat. “It’s like Christmas,” he said, his trolley laden with colourful hanging baskets and bedding plants. “We need to bring some colour to our lives.”
Jonathan Blight from Epsom was buying bulbs, taking advantage of a 50% discount on packets of gladioli and begonias. It is not just the appearance of his property that which benefits from his hobby, he said: “Gardening helps me to deal with things.”
“I’ve been desperate to come,” said Grete Smith, walking the aisles clutching a hand-written shopping list, accompanied by her husband, Clive. A clinical nursing specialist for a private company, she was dedicating some of her three weeks of furlough at home to tending their garden, not least because they expect to spend the summer there instead of going abroad.
The government announcement that centres in England could reopen on Wednesday – following the Welsh government decision to allow trading to resume from Monday – was a “relief” for Jolyon Martin, managing director of Chessington garden centre.
Martin’s parents started the business in 1967 and it is just a stone’s throw from the Chessington World of Adventures theme park, whose car park has been commandeered to become a drive-through, privately-run coronavirus testing centre.
Martin said he was pleasantly surprised by the turnout at the sprawling site and that the store’s main car park was almost full by mid-morning.
But the queue for the tills provided him only limited comfort, as he calculated the impact of the shutdown during the business’s peak March-to-May plant selling season.
He made a number of staff redundant as the lockdown began, then furloughed most of the other workers, and is now in the process of a second round of redundancies among his 170 employees. “If you don’t act early, it can cause trouble later,” he said. “We have written off 30% of annual turnover, even at this stage.”
While the doors were shut, a skeleton staff continued tending the plants and offering home deliveries and call-and-collect service for the local area. But Martin said that accounted for only 10% of their usual trade.
Martin said he believed it was unfair retailers such as supermarkets, and DIY chains including B&Q and Homebase, were allowed to continue selling plants during the lockdown while his business had to remain closed.
Ian Wylie, chief executive of the Garden Centre Association, said about a quarter of the UK’s 2000 centres reopened on Wednesday, with the remainder expected to be back up and running by the weekend, once staff are trained in new safety measures.
“They have to make sure staff are happy to come back,” Wylie explained. “[Centre owners] want everybody to be comfortable.”
The nationwide garden centre group Blue Diamond reopened its 34 English garden centres, following the lead of its Cardiff branch, which welcomed customers back on Monday and did a brisk trade, ringing up 20% more sales than on the same day in 2019.
Alan Roper, managing director of Blue Diamond, said customer behaviour had changed: leisurely browsing had stopped and efficient shopping had replaced it. “It’s a mission to shop. They are doing a clean sweep and making sure that they get everything on the shopping list.
“I think trade will be good for the next few weeks because of that pent-up latent demand. The issue is going to be securing stock, particularly on the nursery side, where they have been dealt a heavy blow,” Roper added.
The abrupt closure of the UK’s 2000 garden centres came at the worst time of year for nurseries and plant growers, who had to throw away millions of pounds’ worth of seasonal plants they had cultivated for the peak sales period.
