How Garden Retailers Can Help Kids Get Into Nature
November 23, 2015 
Note: The following is the latest blog posting (http://ianbaldwin.com/last-child/) by garden retail industry consultant Ian Baldwin. It was originally posted on Nov. 17, 2015.
As old friends and relatives would confirm, I was never a very gifted do-it-yourselfer. Though, like many, I wallpapered, painted, and tiled my way through life until I could afford to pay someone else to do it. But being raised by über-hobbyist parents, I had a choice of things to help Dad with and, no surprise, I chose gardening. Not because I had a love of plants, but because I just had to be outdoors. If I wasn’t playing football or tramping the moors, being Mum and Dad’s gardening go-fer was the next best thing.
So when I harvested more than 40 winter squash the other day, it was just another day in the year’s cycle. While this is great for the ego, it shouldn’t be a big deal. Should it? It’s not like I brought about world peace. I just stuck two seeds in the ground and applied water — easy for me!
We constantly hear of the challenge of getting younger people up off their you-know-whats and into the woods, fields, or even their own back stoops. Surveys suggest that Americans of all ages could be spending 12 hours or more per day in front of some kind of screen!
Screened In?
If gardening is not to become something in old movies and family albums, the industry supply chain and all interested parties need to write their own future. Otherwise, the consumer or society will write it for them. And that might not be good. The future of the $40+ billion garden/outdoor living industry is in the hands of those driving it now.
Now that the topic of connecting kids with nature is becoming a hot one, garden retailers of all shapes and channels should be emphasizing that nature starts with the first step outside. Typically, kids experience a garden space before woods and trails. Let’s start them right in their own backyard.
Baby Steps — Literally
This idea is not new, but is taking years to activate. After years of food gardening being the only real growth sector, how many locally owned garden retailers are now the community leader in this core activity?
I don’t expect The Home Depot or Lowe’s to plow up parking lots and install how-to community vegetable gardens any time soon. But over half of the independent garden centers I know have spare land somewhere adjacent to retail. Many outdoor sales areas are too large, filled with slow-turning inventory. Why not become the place for parents and families to learn the ultimate screen-time antidote?
Why have long-standing, community–based nurseries not established themselves as the place with community gardens and local know-how? Why not partner with a local farmer or non-profit who wants to show their crops growing nearer to the market?
The “eating local” trend has opened up many opportunities for the smart, nimble independent. Back-to-natural emphasis by big retailers from cotton to coffee brings added possibilities for garden retailers to become the local thought-leader. If corporate America is talking about bees and monarchs, can’t local nurseries use this to get the community off the couch?
Do you know how cool we could be?
With the clear trend away from do-it-yourself tree and shrub planting, America is set for years of decorating outdoor space and/or food gardening, but most outside sales areas don’t reflect that. There is little if any emphasis on such entry-level successes as growing a few radish, let alone squash. Garden center websites still feature trees, shrubs, roses, and the like, with little emphasis on owning the secrets to catching a firefly, photographing a hummingbird, or growing milkweed for monarchs.
In the last decade, the home centers have dominated garden retailing to which some purists still say “that was our industry, our product.” As corporate America begins to put the pieces together for the consumer’s foray into nature, I would hate to hear similar cries of “We were the original outdoor retailers, we should have done that!”
Yes we were, yes we should.
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