The 2025 Garden Consumer Guide

After a year of work, the 2025 Garden Consumer Guide will make its first official appearance at the “Salon du végétal” on Tuesday, September 10 at 4:45 p.m., during a conference to be held in partnership with VERDIR.

It’s been going on for 4 years! In 2021, after the COVID epic, we decided to analyze the period and the professional repercussions of this suspended time. At that time, everyone was wondering if this confinement would have consequences on our activities, and in particular, the one that concerns us: the garden!

Since then, every year, we have gotten into the habit, with your help, of wondering about the future of our professions.

With your help… Not that many of you are writing this document, no, but your help comes from the interviews and all the contacts here and there in the profession who give us their points of view. These sharings allow us to better enlighten ourselves and to make a fairly broad assessment of the situations analyzed.

This year, we will keep an eye on the distribution of plants, in order to project ourselves a little better towards the future.

Plants

In the first Garden Consumer Guides, we studied post-COVID trends, then relationships within the company before focusing last year on plants.When we look at the subject, there is no need to be a fortune teller or trend setter to understand that plants are the driving force of the garden. Without them, there would be no garden center, producer or passion among our consumers. They are at the heart of our concerns and must retain our full attention.Beyond commerce, they enter our daily lives to feed us, protect us, care for us and motivate us.Of course, to buy them and install them in your garden, the plant must be desirable. All our work is to care for them, to enhance them, so that they are worthy of the interest that the amateur gardener has in them.The price of plants is one component, but it is not the only one, far from it. On the other hand, this famous price considerably fuels discussions between producers and distributors. And sometimes it stings…

Tensions

Some want a price, others want commitments. Some are often distributors, others are producers. But this is not a generality. Among our various meetings in the field, we have found happy partners!Often, however, each has their own perception and tensions can become palpable.Some distributors, faced with competition in the field, consider that price is the trigger for purchasing. To increase the turnover of the plant department, you have to be the best placed. And this conviction forces them to ask for discounts and reductions from their producer partners.On the other hand, producers can make efforts with the certainty that in exchange, they will have a lasting relationship or a significant commitment with this demanding customer.This is where the problem lies, unfortunately!The arguments are solid on both sides, but the tension persists.The amateur gardener, for his part, expects a beautiful plant, not too expensive and with planting advice.Advice, quality and promotion are as essential as price to make people want to consume plants.

Raw material

Back to basics. Who will have the last word, the one who is in contact with the customer or the one who supplies the goods?In the past, the distributor was king, he controlled the relationship with the end customer and could decide not to offer a particular brand until his requirements had been met.Today, and particularly in the sale of plants, the situation has changed. The reseller does not always have the means or the skills to provide advice and services to his customers. The price is linked to the goodwill of the producers and for the staging and the love at first sight, there may sometimes be a lack of time to create dream settings.On the other hand, our producer lacks direct contact with the consumer. If the majority have not yet taken the plunge, a good number of them have already opened their greenhouses for sale. The profession is organizing itself to welcome these new players. With a few adjustments, a better understanding of the pricing mechanism, a website, and all the skills to sell plants, our producers could well, in the future, do without the filter of traditional distribution…

Angers

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We are not there yet, but nothing prevents us from talking about it. This will be done on Tuesday, September 10, 2024, at the “Salon du Végétal” in Angers. We will meet you at 4:45 p.m. in the greenhouse to discover the 2025 Garden Consumer Guide.See you soon.

Roland Motte… Gardener!

The 2025 Garden Consumer Guide