A late 20-something couple pushes a stroller holding a sleeping baby up one more bedding plant aisle.

“OK,” said the mom. “Here is one called ‘Pink Splash’ that looks just like the ‘Pink Sash’ I just picked up. Ooh, look here’s another one called ‘Pink Flash.’ That creates an interesting image. Wonder who dreamed that name up!”

“I don’t know,” said the iPod-toting dad, clearly bored with the whole process of looking for annuals for the four large, cast-iron urns that they bought ready planted for the patio last year. “They might as well just call the whole place ‘Pink Cash’ and be honest about it. This is confusing. Let’s go. I’m hungry.”

And so goes another episode of the nursery business failing to persuade Gen X to part with its money.

The new generation of customers (and quite a lot of the older ones) are overwhelmed with the plethora of choices in plant material. This seems especially true about the seemingly identical annuals, each of which is proclaimed by breeders to be better than the last.

It seemed a great idea at the time

I blame the whole thing on two English gentlemen, Mike Dunnett and Edward Bach.

In 1982 I attended a seminar in London that these two growers perceptively named “Pots of Money.” These chaps told a packed audience how they were about to rock the sleepy nursery world by propagating, marketing and distributing a huge volume of one perennial variety. They would support this with leaflets, bench signs and big picture boards made of something called Correx (Corflute).

This was a mystifying new world to the 1960s-trained garden center owners present. The plant volumes these men quoted -- 30,000 in year one, 60,000 in year two and 100,000 for as far as the eye can see after that -- were breathtaking when a big order from an independent garden center was 50 of any one item.

The plant was Scabiosa ‘Butterfly Blue.’ The program was a fabulous success with more than 2 million of this world-beating perennial sold in 15 years. And the genie was not going back in that conservative nursery bottle.

Then came the Aussies, who know a thing or two about marketing. An enterprising group there launched a dubiously performing, but beautifully fragrant Boronia as ‘Heaven Scent,’ and the die was cast.

Fast forward to the present when it seems like every breeder is positioning every new plant as the one to be the next mega-order from Home Depot so we all can retire (how about the ‘Petunia 401K Series’?).

Don’t get me wrong. As someone who helped growers locate, develop and market new plants for years, I accept some blame, too. I also feel that having demanded new and superior varieties for years, retailers must shoulder some of the responsibility. But do we really need more new pink impatiens? How many new red geraniums do we need? Isn’t a white bacopa just a white bacopa to 95 percent of homeowners?

Can we turn the tap off? Or at least slow it down?

Gen X needs a different push

Bringing in new, exciting plants for baby boomers who spent their entire weekends on their knees in the garden became a major business strategy for retailers over the last few years. Entire corporations sprung up with R&D, worldwide searching, focus groups and multimillion-dollar marketing programs. The Correx board has come a long way.

But as most industry observers agree, the boomer boom is over. Those avid gardeners who paid most of our wages are transitioning from viola to Viagra.

Is anyone seeing the big picture? Is anyone putting himself in the shoes of the new generation of garden consumer: the non-hobbyists who don’t read about gardening or visit gardens or go to classes in her spare time? It is worth remembering that to a non-hobbyist, home-owning 28 year old, who neither reads about gardens nor attends how-to classes, rose New Dawn is, indeed, new!

Too many choices reduce impulse

In Barry Schwartz’s book “The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less,” he makes a very convincing case for reducing choices for consumers, quoting how supermarkets sell less of the items they are offering for tasting as the choice proliferates. Offer people a choice of six jams and jellies and 30 percent buy something. Offer them more than 20 and the purchase rate drops to less than 10 percent. He suggests that reducing choice and making the shopping experience simpler and less stressful will actually generate loyalty.

There is another paradox that I suggest we consider. Retail consumers are spending less time shopping in the garden center now, while the potential SKU count is exploding. There is so much choice from suppliers that buyers are having a hard time staying focused on what to carry.

Retailers don’t need this stress

The surge in new varieties puts more stress on retailers. They have to decide how to divide and subdivide their buying budgets, although sales may not rise with the increased inventory. They also have a formidable challenge in training and retraining the constantly changing sales team. Retailers also must constantly re-educate their customers with a mixed message that says: “Forget what we said last year, ‘Pink Whiz’ is the best variety.”

As consumers expect a simpler, less stressful shopping experience, isn’t the distribution chain supposed to work more seamlessly to be on their side?

There’s only a very few world-beaters

Just to add to the flux, we have seen a strong polarization of sales toward a few truly excellent, killer varieties. It seems like every few years (but not every few months), a plant comes along that really does live up to the hype. After ‘Butterfly Blue,’ roses Flower Carpet series and Knock Out, the Wave petunia series, Physocarpus ‘Diabolo’ and hydrangea ‘Endless Seller’ spring to mind as truly world-beaters.

I have clients whose rose sales have dropped by half since 1996, but now up to 50 percent of their entire rose volume comes from Knock Out and its sister varieties. I understand why growers and breeders want to find a homerun, but the overhyped wannabes are spoiling the party. I know that multinational seed companies have invested in armies of people in laboratories looking for the next winner, but that is not the retailer’s problem.

The market will (and is beginning to) push back.

Several of our more analytical clients have realized that their new emerging customers really don’t care much about improved garden worthiness, plant genetics or superiority of this variety to last year’s. They just want a pretty show on their porch for the summer.

So, given the premium price of many new and improved selections, these clients are reverting to known, reliable, but considerably cheaper lines to fill that slot. “Better to sell 2,000 known varieties at $5.99 than 200 new introductions with printed pots and big tags for $9.99” was the explanation I heard. And, with some new and improved woody plants approaching $12 wholesale for a 1-gallon, retailers are beginning to look at these numbers more closely.

The market is speaking

I might not be popular in asking breeders and growers to reduce the seemingly identical varieties, to ease off on the gas when it comes to research and breeding, but the market has changed and the appeal of 25 petunias, 40 calibrachoas or 81 hostas has dwindled. Retailers and buyers are becoming more careful about which varieties they give valuable space to.

There will always be a strong, healthy demand for good plants that are marketed by pulling them through the chain, a process that costs millions of dollars in advertising and education that only a few producers can sustain. But for those who can only afford to push it through the chain by selling to the retailers, I think market forces are about to do what market forces do: thin out the players and reduce choices. Breeders and marketers would do well to heed the call.

 

- Ian Baldwin 

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