Consumer Confidence-Nursery Management

2021-12-14 22:39:06 By : Ms. Kelly Bai

Gardeners are not giving up plant habits in 2022, they use success and health benefits as their motivation.

According to research conducted by Axiom, a marketing and consulting company serving the gardening industry, we ushered in another year of strong plant sales, and people's continued pursuit of gardening is mainly driven by the purchase of millennials. More than half of the interviewed groups (baby boomers, generation X and millennials) said they plan to plant more in 2022, and about 30% said they will plant roughly the same amount as in 2021. When you break down by generational demographics, nearly 76% of millennials and 68% of Gen X plan to plant more in 2022. More than half of the baby boomers said they planted roughly the same amount, while one-third of this generation said they would plant more. This is certainly something to be celebrated. This is also beneficial when you prepare your marketing message and start sales discussions with the Independent Garden Center (IGC) and landscape customers.

The pandemic may have motivated consumers to enter the gardening industry in 2020 and 2021, but they have different views on the prospects for 2022. Health and well-being. Spend more time outdoors with family, spend more time at home tied for second place, while creating beautiful outdoor spaces and food gardening tied for third place. Interest in outdoor entertainment ranked fourth, followed by cultivating more wild animals in my yard and solving the problem of global warming. Although the bottom two drivers have not received much response, it shows that consumers are considering these issues, which provides an opportunity for nurseries with niche products and information to build market share.

The homeowners also said that they are confident in this season, and 84% of the respondents said that they think they have achieved success in their gardening work in 2021. "Compared with last year's survey results, this number has remained stable," said Kathleen Hennessy, head of Axiom's Horticultural Marketing Team. “It’s even more encouraging that this number of millennials has jumped to more than 90%. We believe that if this group feels successful, it means that the industry will have long-term growth. Millennials believe that gardening is more than just a Hobbies, it is an extension of their home and an opportunity to expand the outdoor living space."

In 2022, gardeners will invest more money, about 28% of people said they will invest more money in 2022, and nearly 68% will be the same as spending in 2021. This year, homeowners spent the most on garden plants in IGC, followed by hypermarkets.

During the pandemic, respondents said they turned to Facebook more frequently to learn about new plants, gardening supplies and outdoor lifestyle products, followed by YouTube and Instagram.

In 2021, flowers, vegetables, and houseplants are among the top three in gardening, followed by perennials, containers, and shrubs. In terms of new projects in 2022, more than 50% of the respondents plan to build vegetable gardens, while 39% said they plan to add new annual and perennial plants, and 27% hope to grow plants for pollinators and wild animals.26 % Of people want to add new varieties of shrubs and trees, and 24% want to use native plants.

Download a copy of the report here: axiomcom.com/2022-gardening-survey

After the pandemic, we felt like we had a second chance, with a focus on sustainability, climate solutions, and consolidation. In other words, a new beginning. Since many people now work from home, they pay more attention to the layout of indoor and outdoor spaces.

A new starting point in the interior: a fresh and tidy space, a lot of white and occasional light blue and yellow tones are the signs of a new starting point. Because our home now has multiple functions—such as working from home, going to school, exercising, relaxing and welcoming visitors—the interior must be easy to remodel. Therefore, room dividers and multifunctional walls are ideal choices. They are made of natural materials that can incorporate flowers and plants. Foliage plants, variegated plants, and air-purifying plants create a healthy indoor space, provide a fresh appearance, and can also be moved easily.

A new beginning for outdoor spaces: Outdoors, this style trend is marked by a clear layout, a large number of white accessories and white flowering plants. There are fewer roads and more biodiversity. The materials in the garden are biodegradable and are as biologically based as possible. Just like indoors, the garden/terrace/balcony is gaining multiple functions, one of which is the extra living space.

Fresh Start palette: The color chart in this style trend is based on white, combined with a variety of natural colors. Accent colors-such as shades of green, blue and red-appear repeatedly in flowers and plants, highlighting the versatility of the furniture. These colors emphasize the use of restraint, especially to enhance the fresh appearance of white.

More information: flowercouncil.co.uk/article/fresh-start-style-trend

We use the joy of life, creativity and humor to invigorate our spirits. We are putting energy into our mental health. Hobbies and entertainment are fully controlled, as is health. From this utopian world, we observe the world through rose-colored glasses.

Indoor healthy bubbles: Ideally, we want to turn our home into a super luxurious spa resort. The combination of soft tones with transparent materials and circles is reminiscent of water that helps us relax. The flowers and plants look full of vitality, just like the leaves of aloe vera. Painted leaves, feathers, grass and dried flowers are combined with fresh cut flowers. These are sometimes painted, creating color gradients, especially in soft tones.

Healthy bubbles in outdoor spaces: In the garden, you can relax in a bathtub or pond full of exotic flowers and plants. An unusual mixture of exotic plants and blooming borders can be seen on the lounge chairs and lounge chairs. The beautiful sunset provides inspiration for the colors used. In other words, the garden provides the ultimate way to escape the busy period.

Wellness Bubble palette: The color table is composed of vivid pastels and soft neon tones. These examples are shades of pink and yellow, with soft green and lavender on the sides. White is not important, and mainly provides transparency for the overall appearance. These colors are usually used on transparent or translucent surfaces to produce a watery effect.

More information: flowercouncil.co.uk/article/wellness-bubble-style-trend

There is a need for connection, equality, shared reality, altruistic behavior and tolerance. After the stressful pandemic period, we are looking for ways to unite us and eliminate our worries so that we can start enjoying life again without worries.

The interior is bright and relaxing: we enjoy carefree fun in the cheerfully colored interior. Simple patterns with grids, stripes or pictures of fruits enhance the festive mood. Flowers and flowering plants bring the last positive energy to this interior.

The brightness and breeze of the outdoor space: The outdoor space is also colorful and holiday style, you can enjoy time among flowers and green plants. Consider the colorful borders, colorful umbrellas and cheerful garden of your choice as a new experiment in the kitchen garden.

Bright and lively palette: Use cheerful and powerful pastel shades such as pink, blue, mint green, and light orange, alternating with more vivid accents. Coral red has a fresh and soft effect and is important to flowers and plants. White plays a small role in this color chart.

More information: flowercouncil.co.uk/article/bright-and-breezy-style-trend

Some people seek security in orthodox behavior, control, and tradition. They may not trust novelty. In this trend, it is important to restore trust and ensure that familiar, local, and trusted people also have a place in this ever-changing world.

The traditional mood of the interior: The interior design in this trend is warm, rich in color, and has a nostalgic feeling of mixing retro and old. Retro and retro-style flowering plants are very popular in this trend, as is the collection of plants of different varieties within the same species. The bouquets are also cleverly arranged, giving a lot of attention and appreciation to each individual product.

Traditional emotion of outdoor space: In the garden, we found refuge for plants, shrubs and trees, as well as comfortable seats. There are unusual plants, and you can find fruits and vegetables in the vegetable garden. Traditional and romantic roses, especially climbing roses, are harmoniously combined with low fruit trees.

Traditional mood palette: The palette in this style trend consists of soft, faded pastel tones, such as nude, lavender, and pink. In contrast, rich dark colors, such as fuchsia, ocher, and olive green, give people a reassuring feeling. This creates an amazing combination of familiar and innovative elements.

More information: flowercouncil.co.uk/article/traditional-sentiment-style-trend

Protecting the environment at the home and community level is an admirable trend shaping plant sales and landscape design.

The team at online landscape design and gardening coaching company Tilly pointed out three environmental trends that may affect plant sales.

Read more about their trend predictions on tillydesign.com.

Imagine what would happen to your business if you encourage this behavior as much as you encourage safety and efficiency.

Some people are naturally kind, while others need to work hard. As the leader of your company, how do you practice and cultivate kindness?

Kindness can be taught. "It's a bit like weight training. We found that people can actually strengthen their compassionate'muscles' and respond to the pain of others with a desire to care and help," said Richard Davidson, founder and director of the Center for Health Thoughts. University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Kindness is also contagious. "The brains of everyone who witnessed this behavior felt the positive effects of kindness, improving their mood and making them more likely to'pay the price'." This means that doing a good deed in a crowded area can produce dominoes. The domino effect has improved the lives of dozens of people," Dartmouth University said.

It is also very healthy. Witnessing acts of kindness produces oxytocin, sometimes called the "love hormone", which helps lower blood pressure and improve overall heart health. Oxytocin can also increase our self-esteem and optimism, which is especially useful when we feel anxious or shy in social situations.

Good deeds also lower blood pressure, because oxytocin causes the release of a chemical called nitric oxide, which dilates blood vessels. This lowers blood pressure, which is why oxytocin is called the "cardioprotective" hormone.

According to research from Emory University, when you are kind to another person, the pleasure and reward centers in your brain will light up, as if you are the recipient of good deeds—not the giver. This phenomenon is called "helper high". Like most medical antidepressants, kindness stimulates the production of serotonin. This feel-good chemical can heal your wounds, calm you down, and make you happy.

People who are always kind have 23% less cortisol (stress hormone) than ordinary people, and they age slowly.

The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation now has workplace resources to help you and your management team create goodwill in your company.

The foundation stated that using the guide “as a way to connect with others at work—your team, your boss, your employees, remote workers, or anyone. If you embed these elements in your In the workplace, you will find that employees are not only more closely connected at work, but they are also more closely connected at home and in the community."

The author breaks down the elements of creating a friendly culture in the workplace into seven parts. Each section discusses common opportunities in companies that are likely to grow.

Found here: randomactsofkindness.org

Don't save goodwill for the holiday, make it a priority throughout the year.

The cultural ecosystem is consciously grown, developed, nurtured and led, one agreement at a time.

Many things in the world often seem to be beyond our control. We have experienced rapid changes, political and economic uncertainties, employee turnover, and battles for talent. The "future of work" everyone is predicting is still being created. Many things seem to be beyond our control. However, many things are still within our control. Even in everything that circulates around us, every leader, team, and organization has many things that are completely within their control.

One of the greatest mental exercises is to identify and name everything within our control. When we cannot control the weather, the economy, or the latest media scandals, we can still decide what we choose to spend our energy on. There is always a reaction or action within our control. Whenever we shift our thinking from reactionary accusations, making excuses, or feeling sorry for ourselves, and shifting our attention and energy to solutions, gratitude, and ownership of the next step, positive ripples are felt around us . It has established a different spirit for the way forward.

The best leaders and teams understand that their role is to help positively influence the way employees think and provide energy, hope, and clarity on the way forward.

When nine out of ten employees say they will cut pay for a more meaningful culture, all of us should consider the role that all of us play in creating these meaningful cultures. Here are five agreements to allow yourself and your future culture.

1) Breathing—Practice breathing the aerobic air of gratitude, appreciation and happiness every day, not the poisonous air of blame, gossip, negativity and excuses. How you start a new day usually moves your thoughts and actions in a certain direction.

2) Share clear information-we all need and want clarity. Share clear information about where you are heading and what you expect from the road ahead. Is your mission clear? Is your vision clear? Is your team’s commitment to travel clear? Is your strategy for the next priority clear? Otherwise, your team may focus on everything they cannot control.

3) Develop a conscious strategy-have you and your team developed a clear and targeted strategy for the future culture you are trying to create? Can you name the culture you want? Do you have support and guidelines to help everyone move in the same direction? If not, please agree to develop a conscious strategy and seek partners to embark on the journey with you.

4) Exercise your muscles-practice to overcome challenges and obstacles in an individual and team manner. Every time you flex these muscles and overcome the discomfort, you will become stronger. Determination and perseverance are essential to help people overcome obstacles, challenges, negativity, accusations, and differences. Leaders help their employees learn in adversity. Resilience does not lie in being physically stronger than others, but in being able to become vulnerable with your employees and still having the determination to find solutions together.

5) Ownership-Responsible for your words and deeds, and for your physical, mental and mental health. The best leaders associate what they say with active accountability and action. Accountability is not a negative word, but a positive mantra that everyone has. The best culture enables everyone involved in it to become the owner and ambassador of the future culture they create together.

The process of cultivating high-performing and dedicated teams is never-ending. The best leaders, teams, and organizations will develop conscious strategies on how they recruit, onboard, conduct performance reviews, cultivate emerging leaders, and recognize excellence. The best leaders jointly invest in their team and the way of thinking they cultivate.

If you lack clarity, vitality, enthusiasm, or hope for the road ahead, it may be time to reach some new agreements with yourself and the people you are traveling with.

Jason V. Barger is the founder of Step Back Leadership Consulting and author of Thermostat Cultures, ReMember and Step Back from the Baggage Claim, and the host of The Thermostat podcast. Jason VBarger.com

There are almost as many methods to control aphids as there are types of aphids.

Aphids are a very common problem. They are easy to control, but before you treat, make sure that nature has not solved the problem for you.

Aphids often appear on roses, milkweed, crape myrtle, perennials and herbs, but most plant species will parasitize at least one kind of aphids.

It is impossible or undesirable to remove every aphid. In most cases, aphids will occur at low densities. If the aphids are large enough to cause growth distortion or damage flower buds, intervention may be required. The decision comes down to the number of insects and damage you can tolerate and how long it lasts. Due to the colonization of plants by natural enemies, many aphids infestations disappear within a few weeks.

Source: North Carolina State University Extension

Identification: The aphids are small (1-10 mm) and pear-shaped. The color varies from species to species, but the more common colors are green, red, yellow, or black. They can be smooth, or some of the more gorgeous "woolly" aphids may have white downy similar to mealybugs. To distinguish aphids from other pests (such as scales), look for cockscombs-two "tail tubes" that protrude from the ends of their bodies.

Sometimes aphids have wings, which can get rid of positive identification. In order to alleviate overcrowding in groups, some aphids will grow wings to help them fly to new food sources. Unfortunately, they may also develop new groups.

Detection: Look for shiny spots of honeydew on the leaves, and then check whether there are aphids on the leaves. Monitor plants in spring and early summer to determine if intervention is needed.

When scouting, watch carefully to make sure you are seeing live aphids. Newborn aphids will eat and shed their skins four times before they reach adulthood. When they molt, they leave old skin on the surface of the plant, which looks like white flakes. This can easily be mistaken for whiteflies or other pests, so please use a 10x handheld lens to confirm your identity.

Cultural control: Aphids and many other pests thrive on plants that are under pressure or that have received nitrogen fertilizer. Both of these factors reduce the defenses of plants and make them more nutritious to pests.

Mechanical control: Aphids usually appear in groups and can be trimmed from plants. A single rose stem may have a dense population of aphids, while the rest of the plant may be clean. Removal of infested stems can solve the problem and eliminate the need for pesticides. Aphids and aphids colonies can also be removed with water flow.

Biological control: Aphids have many natural enemies, such as ladybugs and their larvae, green lacewings and their larvae that sometimes disguise themselves with fragments, hovering fly maggots, parasitic wasps and insectivorous fungi. Usually, as the population of aphids grows, natural enemies multiply to reduce the population.

Chemical control: Sometimes natural enemies cannot control aphids, so chemical control may be required. Aphids are soft and can usually be killed with insecticidal soap or garden oil instead of more toxic products.

The bright orange flowers attract pollinators and create a "thriller" for the container.

I started writing the Green Guide in January 2018, which included a column about buttercups, a lovely fern. This month’s article marks the end of my fourth "season" as a writer, and this is the final "episode" of the Green Guide I will be writing. In the past four years, I have introduced you to 48 extraordinary plants that deserve a bigger stage in garden and horticulture production. Other writers and plant geeks will continue this great column. I thank Kelli Rodda, editor of Nursery Management magazine, for giving me this rare opportunity to share my love for plants with you.

Nature hates vacuum, and I have found in my life that as an event ends, new opportunities appear to fill the gaps. Kelli and I have been talking about a new column in this magazine for months, which will focus on tropical plants and indoor plants. The enthusiasm for indoor gardening has reached an epic level, and a new generation of gardeners are eager for exciting new plants. In this new column, which we call Flora Exotica, my goal is to introduce you to some great plants that have important horticultural potential from a production and sales point of view. This is your "trailer", so look for the premiere of next year's February issue. From one plant geek to another, this may be as big as the new Game of Thrones series!

Now, in order to bridge the gap between tropical and temperate zones, let’s get to know Leonotis leonurus, or lion’s tail, which is a plant native to South Africa and other countries in Southern Africa in zones 8-11 of the United States Department of Agriculture. This kind of thriller is easy to grow in full sunlight and partially shaded in well-drained, moderately humid soil. It is drought tolerant, but prefers ordinary summer water to make it look its best. This summer, we put a beautiful specimen in a container on the deck, and it has been beautiful for months. Bright orange flowers are a highlight of autumn.

Leonotis is resistant to deer and is very attractive to hummingbirds and pollinators. It has almost no pests and diseases in the garden. Keeping the leaves dry when watering will further reduce the risk of leaf fungus. It is a great choice for Mediterranean gardens and can be perfectly matched with Salvia greggii, Phlomisfruiticosa, canna, agave, sunflower, etc.

Finally, I want to thank everyone who has read the Green Guide in the past four years. I hope you find the plants I have chosen are very enlightening and the information is useful. I especially like to reply to many people who send questions via email or even send photos of plants in the garden. I am very grateful for how our industry has brought people together in so many attempts to divide our time. Keep planting, my friends!

Common names: lion tail, lion claw, lion ear

Description: A semi-evergreen shrub with bright orange tubular flowers.

Landscape uses: borders, pollinator gardens, containers.

Mark Leichty is the director of business development for the Little Prince Kindergarten in Oregon near Portland. He is a certified plant geek who likes to visit beautiful gardens and garden centers, looking for rare and unique plants to satisfy his plant desires. mark@littleprinceofegon.com