A Spring of Four-Letter Words

Chris Beytes

As you read this it’s July or beyond, and Spring 2026 is officially in the books, meaning you already know exactly how your business fared. You enjoyed it or you endured it or you managed some combination thereof. Either way, it was the usual rollercoaster ride, up one week and down the next, up in one region and down in another. Our friend Dr. Will Healy summed up spring pretty neatly at a Cincinnati Flower Growers meeting when he told the group that it could be described using nothing but four-letter words: heat, cold, rain, snow and hail—sometimes in the same week!

But as I write this, it’s still only June 8, with three more weekends in which to make hay … or get wet trying. So I can’t call the season yet. However, I can give you a recap of the first 10 weeks to give you some perspective on the season that you missed whilst in the heat of battle.

April. The early (April 5) Easter wasn’t a big one (just 7.9 in the U.S. and 5.2 in Canada), but the South didn’t notice—they’d been selling like crazy for four weeks already, breaking records and calling it “like COVID times.” Scores of 10 came in from across the South, west to Kansas, Nebraska and California. I loved sharing that with those of you still waiting for spring to start.

April 11-12 continued strong at 7.9/6.1, with more 10s from the South and 9s from unexpected places like New York and Washington State. April 18-19 dropped to the 14-year average for the week in the U.S.—7.2. Canada made some slight gains to 6.5. But it’s still early, you told me. The season is shaping up to be fantastic!

My headline for April 25-26 read, “We slipped a bit, but spring’s still solid.” 

“Slipped” meaning the national averages dropped to 7.0/6.2. Blame horrible weather in the East, which dropped that region to 4.4. But the South remained strong at 7.8. Best of all, fully a third of you sent in excellent scores of 9 and 10, so it wasn’t bad for everybody. And consumers were buying!
May. May 2-3 was another flat one, at 7.2/5.6. Dang! Blame sketchy weather across the East (6.4) and Midwest (6.4). But the Pacific Northwest got into the game strong, though, at 9.3, and a third of you rated the weekend a 9 or 10.

Our big weekend, Mother’s Day, didn’t disappoint in the U.S., scoring 8.4 (Canada at least got back into the 6s, at 6.3). But it wasn’t a rousing success. On an average Mother’s Day Weekend, 41% of you score it a perfect 10. This year, only 27% did. But that’s in part because you were up against a strong 2025 Mother’s Day—8.9/8.5.

May 16-17, the post-Mother’s Day Weekend, scored a very respectable 8.0. But May 16-18 is Canada’s three-day Victoria Day holiday weekend and it was not so good for them, at 7.0—more than a point below their Victoria Day average of 8.3. It was cold in the Prairie provinces!

Is Memorial Day a plant holiday? Some say no. But others say that if consumers have a weekday off in spring, it’s a chance for them to buy plants, so yes, it is a plant holiday. Regardless, Memorial Day Weekend scored just 6.9 in the U.S.— a full point softer than average. But a whopping 9.2 in Canada—a full point stronger than average (and it’s not even a holiday weekend for them). And here’s where Memorial Day got really mixed: More than 50% of you rated it 6 or below. Ugh. But 36% of you rated it 9 or 10. Yay! That left only 12% of you in the “fair” category. 

May 30-31 performed well for most everyone above the Mason-Dixon, with New England, the Midwest and Canada reporting happy scores. The final score for the last weekend of May: 7.3/8.3.

June. That brings us to today, as I tally the scores for June 6-7. Thus far I see a May-like average of 8.4 in the U.S. and 8.1 in Canada, with an impressive 52% of you scoring it 9 or 10. Strong! If scores keep coming in like that, the weekend should go higher.

How did we finish the season? Let’s hope it can be described with four-letter words—like “epic,” “tops” or “huge.” GT