The Thinking House - Monitoring your Garden Habits. Also a Cute Dolphin Succulent

Did you know there are approximately 1.3 million regular gardeners in Ireland?  We have an average age of 49 years and of which 63% are women. 

 

How do I know this? I hear you ask.  It’s because we are being watched, monitored and assessed by Bord Bia’s Insight Centre with the catchy title of “The Thinking House” 

Their latest state-of-the-art Consumer Research Centre was set up a while ago to find out just what we like and how much money we have in our pockets to spend on the garden in the kitchen and on other “lifestyle” products.  

Gardening in Ireland

The gardening aspect of it has been specifically set up to help garden centres and companies in the business to know their market and react accordingly, which stretches to exports too.

 'The Thinking House'  in their consumer research titled The “Gardening in  Ireland” summary report revealed the most popular types of gardeners have mature families or are in (as they affectionately say) the ‘twilight’ stage of their life, accounting for 44% of all gardeners. The report also broke down the gardeners by their activities:

• 83% Plant flowers and shrubs
• 74% Carry out lawn maintenance
• 66% Design & Place hanging baskets / window boxes
• 60% Sow or plant herbs
• 57% Carry out hardscaping, paving, and maintenance
• 52% Sow or plant vegetables / fruit
• 52% Plant hedging or trees

Planting flower and shrubs is the most regular activity of the Irish gardener. Designing and placing hanging and window boxes came in second with lawn care, and sowing or planting seed tied for third.

Gardener of the Future

The gardener of the future will be eco-aware and see anything that will maintain a “good looking” and “productive” garden with less effort as more appealing, said the report.

The gardener of the future will also have a compact style, but that is up to the trade world to provide them with the means to garden in compact spaces. A third of all pre-family life stages have “limited or no” gardening space to grow and 59% say that 59% say that if they could garden in a small space it would encourage them to garden more.

The gardener of the future will be connected and utilise online forums and support to curate ideas and develop solutions for their garden. The online retailing sector is still in its infancy according to the report but as technology usage amongst gardeners grows this market is set to expand.

57% of adults see their garden as another room for entertaining and 80% of adults with children see their garden as a playground, according to the report.

Bord Bia’s report provides retailers and trade professionals with a key insight into the current gardening industry and the future of the everyday gardener. With the online marketplace for gardeners expected to expand as connected gardeners do, the trade industry feel they are in a great position to capitalise on the findings. 

One thing that the report doesn’t seem to highlight though is most people now shop at pound shops or “Bargain” stores for their gardening products and plants. Garden centres, manufacturers and growers will need to be very competitive if they want some of our hard earned money which won’t be an easy task as the “Buy Cheap, Buy Twice” motto seems to be getting more common.

Cute Plants

We humanize animals and now plants are becoming anthropomorphised. There are a couple of succulents doing the rounds that have the cute factor. These quirky little plants have gone down a storm in Japan, a country where cuteness (or “kawaii”) is a prominent aspect of popular culture. One is called Monilaria obconica and looks like small bunny rabbit ears popping out of a tube when the leaves are young. 

Another cutie is called the Senecio peregrinus, this plant has a bunch of tiny leaves that look like little dolphins jumping in the air. Of course when I saw this plant I thought it could be another one of my “get rich quick” schemes and sell them on EBay but try as I might I couldn’t get a hold of any to propagate. 

It was only today when I was in the polytunnel that I realised I have had a couple of poor, neglected specimens of the plant for the last four years! Indeed, they do look like dolphins if you use your imagination at a particular angle, but it’s too little too late for selling as it’s take at least six months to produce offsets and by that time the fad will have passed. They are the Fidget Spinners of the gardening world.