Retailers see green as lawn & garden sales blossom - Hot Growth Categories

Discount Store News, Oct 2, 1995

Gardening is such a popular hobby these days that sales of lawn & garden supplies have risen dramatically and now rival the importance of computer hardware and housewares in the minds of many discounters.

Sales have been so robust that discounters expect lawn & garden supplies will be among the 10 fastest growing categories over the next 12 to 18 months. One out of eight retailers who were surveyed in an exclusive Discount Store News poll of executives said L&G would remain a hot growth category in the coming year, placing it sixth on the top 10 list. That is a virtual tie with computer hardware and housewares.

Green goods which drive the L&G category, rank among the hottest-selling items in the category.

Annual flower transplants was the best-selling item out of 120 on the annual survey of the National Gardening Association. Out of 72 million U.S. households, 24.5 million bought annual bedding plants during the '94-'95 season.

That jibes with the findings of the DSN productivity study (Aug. 7 issue) which found that live goods are the best-selling items in discount stores. Live nursery products accounted for $1.48 billion in sales last year out of a total of $4.51 billion.

Other findings in the NGA survey's top 10 list included potting soil, 21.6 million households; vegetable seeds, 21.3 million; long tools, 21.1 million; hose, 20.9 million; and grass seed, 19.0 million.

To capitalize on green goods, Wal-Mart now is emulating home centers by installing permanent greenhouses in a number of test stores so it can sell tropical house plants during the winter when summer annuals and shrubs have had their day in the sun.

Since gardeners like to have the newest and best, a miniature petunia is apt to top the charts for the '96 season, predicted All America Selections, an organization that tests the best of newly bred plants. Called Pink Morn, the miniature petunia is part of the Fantasy hybrid series and is especially suited for container gardening since it never needs to be pinched back or pruned. With less time for gardening, Americans are moving to container gardening, said Nona Koivula, executive director of AAS.

Seizing on the trend, Bemis has developed a line of self-watering planters and said that its Alive and Well line of outdoor planters, which resemble terra cotta (but are made of plastic), are its best sellers.

Another new wrinkle in live plants is the growing popularity of pre-planted inserts that can be dropped into containers or window boxes for instant gardens, said Dr. Chuck Greenidge, an Evergreen, Colo., consultant to the L&G industry and contributing editor of Nursery Retailer, a Clearwater, Fla., trade magazine serving the nursery and garden center industry.

Low voltage lighting continues to get hotter, Greenidge said, now that vendors have developed POS merchandisers that display accent and flood-lighting sets out of the boxes, as seen at Wal-Mart garden centers.

Ergonomics is the buzz word for best-selling long tools, he added, with shorter handles and grips selling well to women and older gardeners. Ames and True Temper have applied the principle of bent handles to lessen the work of shoveling snow to garden rakes for next season.