Has demand for bedding gone to sleep?

摘要

Eloise Seddon asks if an increase in sales of perennials could spell problems for growers that produce bedding. With the unpredictable climate we've experienced in the past few years and the trend for low-maintenance gardening among younger, busierpeople, some pundits are predicting a nosedive in popularity for bedding plants. Neither as hip as exotics, as sturdy or long-lived as shrubs, nor as unusual as herbaceous perennials, it would be easy to dismiss bedding as old person's plants that have the main purpose of adorning municipal parks and roundabouts. So how is bedding actually doing? Will herbaceous perennials increasingly supersede bedding plants or can the market sustain both? According to the Horticultural Trades Association's latest setof figures released in the Garden Industry Monitor for 2000-2001, bedding plants accounted for 19 per cent of retail spend on horticultural stock - 314 million pound out of a market worth just under 1 billion pound. Furthermore, DIY superstores saw their market share increase by two per cent to 19 per cent of the market.