A local garden centre has announced that it has just opened up its Christmas shop despite the big day still being months away. 

General manager of Thatcham Garden Centre Mike Forster said that the team was delighted to welcome customers into their new festive store on Saturday, October 5. 

When asked why the centre decided to open up so early, Mr Forster responded that he feels this gives their customers a chance to fully get prepared for the festive season. 

"We feel that opening so early in the year fully gives people the chance to browse and look at what kind of things we have on offer," he said. 

"They can then make their decisions on the new things for their trees and can start picking new bits up as they go along. We feel that this works well for customers."

Mr Forster went on to say that the garden centre continues to get quite busy from November onwards with people wanting to pick up bits and bobs for their Christmas trees. 

The company's cut trees start arriving around this time also, so customers can pick up them super early. The store offers cut trees as well as potted ones and even has an array of artificial furs. 

"By November we really want to be ready to offer everyone all things Christmas so they can look at our range whilst purchasing their trees," Mr Forster said. 

He went on to say that people mainly come to the Christmas shop to buy an assortment of ball-balls but they also do festive food and gifts. 

He continued that customers are already buying up all their Christmas cards in preparation for this year. 

"Things like that people are looking at fairly early, so we need to make sure we're prepared to keep up with the demand," Mr Forster said. 

"We also do our own range of lighting that people love to have a look at. Also, some value tubs of ball-balls aside from singular ones for purchase."

He went on to say that the store did see a great turnout for the opening weekend of their Christmas shop. 

Dozens of people came in to get their hands on some early festive pieces, and Thatcham Garden Centre even invited the big man himself to welcome customers. 

"We had a singer and a Santa on the day of opening which was really great. We also had a discount for our club card members," Mr Forster concluded.