A boom in sales when Brits were stuck at home – garden centres were open during the nation’s three lockdowns – as well as a shortage in materials are being blamed for the scarcity.
Ian Byrne, assistant manager of Highfield Garden World in Whitminster, west of London, told the BBC there had been a “massive upswing” in sales.
“We haven’t seen a gnome in six months now unfortunately,” he said.
He said gnomes of any type, whether plastic, stone or concrete, are affected.
He said garden centres across Europe were also “booming”, which was contributing to the dearth of gnomes in the nation.
He said it was even tough to get the materials to make them, too.
Garden Centre Association chief executive, Iain Wylie, told the BBC garden items including gnomes had also been caught up in the Suez Canal ship backlog.
He said containers of garden furniture, including the ornaments, were in the shipping traffic trapped behind the Ever Given.
Garden gnomes comes from the German for ‘garden dwarfs’.
Their popularity soon spread to the UK and France and they’re now seen as retro garden must-haves.
This content first appear on 9news
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