I'm a freelance writer who does market research reports on various topics for a company called Mintel. These topics in the past have ranged from soup to red meat to dental accessories (ugh! that one was deadly!), and now I'm happily working on gardening. Basically, these reports are a comprehensive market report, a state of the industry so to speak. They have sales data, consumer research, competitive analysis, market drivers, trends, supplier overview, etc.

I'd love to get the perspective of any of you who wouldn't mind sharing your thoughts, as those knowledgeable about the market and what's hot, what's not, etc. Any info is welcome, but I'd be particularly interested in hearing about how sales have been this year relative to previous years, and if there's an emerging trend there; if your customer base is changing; what you see as the trends in the industry, etc. I'm trying to get perspectives from across the country, not just here in the Midwest.

I'm an avid gardener myself, so I feel like I have a decent grasp of what's going on and what affects the market, but of course that could just be colored by my own personal preferences. For example, I grow hundreds of tomato plants from seed each year, and it seems to me that heirloom fruits/vegetables have been getting a lot of press lately. But, I wonder if this is really such a big phenomenon, or if it's just one of those things that's trendy to talk about, but not that big in terms of numbers, both with people buying heirloom varieties from nurseries and retailers and with more people growing them.

Feel free to respond here or to email me directly if you would like to share your thoughts. If this post is out of line here for some reason, I apologize in advance - I usually hang out in the Tomato Forum, so I'm not entirely sure of the protocol here.

Thanks all, and happy selling! I buy all my annuals/perennials from small/local nurseries, and I'm constantly amazed at how hard all of you work. Seriously. I've also grown flowers from seed, or have attempted to....let's just say I'm in awe of anyone who does anything involving gardening for a living. And I know that your perspective as market gardeners is a bit different from, say, larger nurseries that sell more plants, but I'd still be interested in your perspective. (I've posted this on the Professional Gardener Forum as well.)

Tasha

Before I launched my business I read all sorts of market reports and "how-to" guidebooks, I thought I was ready and understood how the market machine worked. Now that I have been at it for one year and my business is only a sideline weekend, home-based business (in other words, microscopically small), I can say that not much of the reading helped.

My observations would include that the marketplace is undefined or undefinable, the impact of big box retailers and warehouse/wholesale clubs is HUGE, quality doesn't mean the same thing to all people, trends travel at different speeds in different places. Not everyone cares about organic, or heirloom, or natural, or native. Not every business person is in a position to make playing to these niches profitable.

A lot of comments get recycled on list serves such as this one and in books and reports on the green industry that just don't hold water when you're standing in front of potential customers (one person states that they can sell specialty tomatoes at $4/lbs while another only gets $.50) Different markets, different seasons, different weather, different customers, means different results.

I worked at a large nursery before and spent a while at a garden center and now I sell at a stall in a large open air market on weekends. I have no way to predict what folks will buy. Anything that's blooming doesn't always hold true. Anything that's unusual isn't always the case either. My solution is to take small amounts of anything and everything and this seems to place me ahead of my competitors. I worry about the vendors that show up with only 12-inch hanging baskets, baskets they have obviously invested a lot of time on, only to dump them at $8 per - and then they only sell a hand full by the end of the day. How will they stay in business?

In this area the state has incentives to get tobacco farmers to switch to a different crop, the result is an abundance of bedding plant operations. In the spring even conveniance stores sell blooming annuals. Competition is abundant and plants can be very cheap. On the plus side it makes it easy for me to purchse what I can't grow.

What I hear from friends and family members is that money is getting tighter and spending on hard-to-find plants is ending. Most of the newer cultivars are not living up to the hype and gardeners are beginning to not trust the experts or promotional material. True gardeners are not interested in larger plants - they want to start out small and watch it grow, they want to compose their own combo planters not buy them ready made. Around here the mere whisper of disease problems at a certain facility will affect buyers choices, maybe not enough in the overall scheme of things, but something.

An additional comment I would like to make concerning trends in the green marketplace is that industry wide there are few businesses that stand out above all the others - these places don't follow the trends, they create the trends. My personal thoughts are that there is only so much room for that sort of thing. The consumer can only grasp onto a limited number of "hot cultivars" or new species. If every available plant was promoted heavily it would dilute the sales of all plants.

The summer heat has put a damper on gardening in this area, so our season is over. Once again folks around here are complaining that the plants are not living up to the hype.