Gardening Boom Will Likely Continue, At Least Overseas
The COVID-19 lockdown gardening boom which led to record demand for plants during the pandemic is continuing in the United Kingdom, despite many people being back at work.
Since March 2020, Tesco, a leading multinational retailer in the region, saw demand for bedding plants and shrubs in particular rise by nearly 50% with more than 75 million individual plants sold.
The Horticultural Trades Association (HTA) calculates that three million new gardeners emerged during lockdown, with 2.3 million continuing their new hobby into this year.
HTA recently asked a representative sample of 2,000 British adults the purposes for which they tend to use their gardens every year since 2019. Using the garden to grow plants, trees, or flowers and growing food were the primary source behind the three million new gardeners statistic.
Taking the British population size of 52.6 million adults and the proportion of these people with access to a garden or outdoor space (83%), this 6.71% change was equivalent to an extra 2.9 million people gardening.
The boom has also helped the supermarket’s main bedding plant supplier, Bridge Farm Group, based in Spalding, Lincolnshire, to invest further in its business.
In the last two years, the top five most popular bedding plants have been:
- Geranium
- Petunia
- Fuchsia
- Impatiens
- Dahlia
“The lockdown gave many people the opportunity to not only spend more time in their gardens but also hone their gardening skills,” says Tesco Horticulture Category Buying Manager Alex Edwards. “The feeling of wellbeing gained from nurturing and being amongst plants is one of the main reasons why lockdown consumers have kept their gardening bug even after returning to work.”
Continue reading at Tesco.com.
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