How to support a Plant Parent!

Author: Harm Custers – Manager Marketing & Sales Flowers at Takii Europe

Wondering where the trend of using more (indoor) plants comes from? What is behind this? And how we can all support this?

During the recent Fleuroselect Home Garden Conference, I learned from Scott Mozingo of Burpee (one of our key customers in the USA), that Millenials (or generation Y – age group 23 till 38) play an important role in this trend. Recent articles in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times have confirmed this.

Plant Parents are as obsessed with their plants as other people are with their pets. And no wonder: Not only do plants brighten up your home, but they are also beneficial for your mental and physical health. Studies have shown that (indoor) plants can improve your mood, relieve stress, increase concentration and productivity, boost your immunity and lower your disease risk.

One of the Plant Parents:

“We believe that in today’s fast-paced, digitalized world we need to reconnect with nature. We feel the need to surround ourselves with nature, we want a connection to something so basic yet so essential, that will remind us of the ‘natural pace of life’ beyond smartphones and social media.”

Isn’t this a fantastic development? Not related to any strong marketing campaign, but initiated by this generation themselves? Growing plants has been in our human DNA for ages. Due to all kinds of (technological) developments, many people have moved away from it, but now there is a movement back to nature! I think that we all should be supporting this.

I had the fortune to grow up in a horticultural environment: sowing, planting, watering and making hands dirty is second nature. An experience that I am daily using in my profession, but which I could also use to help starting gardeners. Those Plant parents mostly don’t know a lot about growing: so what! This does not stop them from doing it. And if they have questions, they simply ask others to help them, in various social media communities and tribes.

Please look at  #plantparenthood and find great pictures, stories and plant experiences. You can find very funny questions from new gardeners, but those Plant Parents truly want to have an answer. And why not give this to them? We can all be teachers, we should all reach out and support them! To embrace, encourage, inspire and learn from them. It should be our mission to turn them into structural gardeners of the future!