AS THE green shoots of Spring begin to appear, some of us are also turning our attention to the challenges and opportunities represented by increased focus on ‘green’ matters within our industry.

It would be foolish to think that green issues - whether of climate change, carbon emissions, plant miles, or healthier living - aren’t already very important. We must take them seriously, but learn to turn them to our advantage.

Evidence to support this lies in what our customers are already doing. They’re buying more plants suitable for drier climates, and they’re buying more fruit trees, vegetable plants and seeds to improve the quality of their food and to reduce food miles. Further evidence comes from plant suppliers, who are already moving further into supplying edible plants, or using the local sourcing of plants to minimise plant miles as a customer prompt. We see leading retailers recognising the potential value of acknowledging their customers’ new green awareness, too.

Make no mistake, green issues will increasingly affect our customer spending patterns, and we need to get on top of these issues if we’re to benefi t rather than suffer from them. HTA is already on the case. We’re doing work with Reading University to clarify carbon absorption properties of typical garden plants, which will then help us identify the carbon footprints of domestic gardens, as well as nurseries and garden retailers.

There’s new consumer research in the pipeline to measure the general public’s awareness of key environmental issues and how it’s changing their spending patterns. All this is on the agenda for our Retail Management Group and Ornamental Growers Committee, who will be discussing the implications over the months to come.

We’ll be taking the whole issue further at our Annual Conference in October, clearly identifying customer attitudes and buying habits and how these can be turned to further commercial advantage in new product, marketing, and merchandising approaches.

This could be the green light for putting growth back into our industry that we’ve been waiting for.