This year’s Glee has been hailed as a great success with show director Matthew Mein stating: “The quality of the buyers at the three-day show has been incredible.”

Glee moved its open days to Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, a decision that paid off handsomely, according to Matthew.

“There has been so much happening this year. We've had really positive feedback from all the exhibitors across Glee, and we also managed to launch PAWExpo in readiness for 2020.

“Meeting so many of the CEOs as well as buyers from some of our big multiple chain garden centres has been really interesting, especially with all the activity going on at the moment in the industry. It’s great to hear and see so much general upbeat positivity, and I believe that's based on garden centres being a really good retailing industry, in terms of steady trading.

“Garden centres are so much different to the high street and that positivity is coming through. Retailers are definitely in a buying mode. We've had lots of feedback from our suppliers taking good orders as well as lots of interest being shown in their products.

“Having a Tuesday start has been extremely helpful. The quality of buyers that came in on that first day was a reaction to that. It enabled a lot of buyers to visit Glee after their Monday reordering day. It’s certainly made Glee more accessible.

“And buyers are spending longer periods of time at the show, returning on a second or third day. People have to take a couple of days to ‘shop’ the show properly.

“We’ve also received good feedback from international buyers who’ve returned to the show after a five or six year absence. The size, scale, depth and breadth of Glee have surprised them. Glee is definitely getting back on the international stage.”