St Peter’s Garden Centre has electronically tagged its baskets to prevent green-fingered customers making off with them.
The large wheeled baskets can be pulled around the store with a handle, beep if anyone tries to take them through the doors to the car park.
Shoppers are now obliged to place everything from sacks of pet food, to clothing, plants, or garden implements, in shopping bags or ask a member of staff to help them carry goods to their cars.
The garden centre started out with 100 baskets, but by December they were down to just three.
Tom Brown, Manager, St Peter’s Garden Center, said: “We had 100 original shopping baskets and were down to three. People want to take them with them.
“It happens all over the world. We have taken steps to ensure that the investment we made in our shopping baskets will stay with us for some time.”
Blue Diamond operates 17 Garden Centres in England and the Channel Islands. Their website states: ‘We target ABC1 consumers through our aspirational environments which deliver a point of difference within the sector.’
Mr Brown added: “Staff advise customers that should they request a store to car service we are more than capable of doing that. We are not unique in tagging our shopping baskets.”
Thefts of shopping baskets soared in the UK last year when supermarkets introduced a 5p tax on shopping bags, with one Tesco store in Manchester reporting the loss of a third of their baskets in one week.