Trade was awfully quiet. This was depressing, since it was Day One of what the owners call their annual Tree Weekend. Not enough people came wanting to buy trees, or anything else. I can't blame the weather, since it was a truly beautiful day, sunny, not windy, with no forecast of rain to deter visitors, and the low October light made the plant centre and garden look very pretty.
Maybe it has been such a difficult year for gardening that by now people are discouraged. Drought, followed by endless rain, rampant growth of weeds and garden plants alike as a result of the rain, fruit and vegetables that rotted or never ripened, a second dry spell that left the top 15cm of soil too dry and hard to feel comfortable planting things, torrential rain again over the past couple of nights. Perhaps many gardens are now such a dishevelled mess that planting anything new is not at the top of people's lists of things to do.
Maybe it is the economic squeeze. Retail spending has been subdued all year, and plants and garden furbelows are heavily discretionary items, compared to food, say, or children's shoes. Consumers have been cutting back on driving, too, given that petrol sales are down in volume terms, and that isn't helpful to rural businesses like ours. Some of our customers are frankly rich, but most are merely comfortable. Many are retired. They have probably seen negative real income growth for several years, and could be having to help out children and grandchildren. I don't think there is loads of spare money swashing around the middle classes of East Anglia.
Maybe it is the low level of activity in the housing market. Moving into a new house with no garden beyond whatever oddities the developer left you, or moving into a place with an existing garden you don't like, are spurs to plant buying. Gardens are very late cycle in housing terms, since most people would probably sort out the house and furniture before they put too much money and effort into the garden, but the market has been depressed for a long time now. People who've moved have had time to get to grips with their gardens.
Maybe gardening is going out of fashion. It had a big upswing in the 1980s and early 90s, so perhaps that is reversing to some extent. It gets far less cover on television than it used to. Where once Gardeners' World was popular Friday night viewing and we had Groundforce and various offerings from Channel Four, audience figures for Gardeners' World are off their peak, and Groundforce is no more. I think Alan Titchmarsh is doing something for ITV, but nobody I know has mentioned watching it. I should say that in TV terms baking was the new gardening, and sales of bakeware at Lakeland are through the roof.
Maybe (whisper the thought) our customers are getting a little bored of the Tree Weekend. The format has been the same every year for as long as I've worked there. The boss and a professional landscaping chum of his demonstrate how to plant a tree. The boss leads a guided tour of the garden. The manager gives a talk on pruning. All the talks are free, but by now loyal customers would have been able to see the boss plant a tree approximately fifteen times. The owners must know in their heart of hearts that the Tree Weekend is not what it was, since they didn't bother getting the gardener to come in to act as car park marshall.
It is rather depressing. I feat that the owners of the plant centre need to put some money into marketing and advertising, but when cash is tight they don't like doing that. Plant retailing is a very fragmented market, and we're pretty good at doing it. There must be lots of people out there still buying plants, even in a depressed market, so how do we get them to buy their plants from us? Answers on a postcard, please.
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