My opinion is Memorial Day marks the end of Spring business for garden centers in the Houston area. Sales will tail off dramatically next month. It's a combination of less customer traffic and the average sale declines quite a bit. We see a steady weekly sales drop from now until about mid September. Then sales trend up every week to Thanksgiving. 
          When I close out May's sales it gives me a key number that I use in my cash flow projections for the rest of the year. Historically, we do between 54% and 61% of our sales from January through May. It's always better for me when we end up doing 54% of our sales through May because that means my Summer and Fall sales are good relative to Spring sales.  54%-61% is the range I will fall into and the numbers I have to work with to project cash flow through the rest of the year. For example, say we end up doing 1 million dollars in sales Jan-May this year. I would then expect year end sales to be between $1,640,000 and $1,850,000. That is $210,000 difference. At my gross profit margin of about 45% (sales minus cost of goods) that is a difference in cash flow of $95,000. If I spend money expecting the higher sales amount and I am wrong I may have a $100,000 problem at the end of the year!  You might have guessed by now which number I use for making spending decisions. It helps me sleep at night.
          I read an article from a garden center consultant that had studied many garden centers and he found a key number that seemed to separate successful nurseries from those that did not fare very well in business. He found that the successful businesses had gross profit margins at least 26% above their labor costs. If their labor costs were 18% of sales and they achieved a 44% GPM then that would likely give them enough to pay their expenses and still have a decent profit for the year.