Blooms of Bressingham, the UK-listed garden centre chain, is in preliminary discussions over a possible sale of the business to an un-named bidder, tipped to be a consortium led by property and retail entrepreneur Sir Tom Hunter.

Blooms confirmed that it had received an indicative offer of 85 pence per share, which values the company at £29.7m.

Hunter's consortium, which acquired the Wyevale garden centre group for £310m in 2006, consists of his investment vehicle West Coast Capital, HBOS, Icelandic investment group Baugur and two property entrepreneurs. West Coast Capital also owns a 5.7 per cent stake in Dobbies Garden Centres.

Richard Ratner, an analyst at Seymour Pierce, described the offer as “not over-appetising, given the potential of the property portfolio”, but added that if further bidders were to emerge then this figure could just be the starting point. 

Blooms operates nine garden centres around the Midlands and one in Wales, and also retails its products online. The company recently released figures for the Christmas period, which showed a 19.4 per cent increase on group sales, describing the figures as “an encouraging result, but nevertheless somewhat below our expectations” given the further significant improvements which we made to our Christmas range this year.”