First Fleuroselect International Home Garden Conference

First Fleuroselect International Home Garden Conference - Communication is the Key!

The first International Home Garden Conference, hosted by Fleuroselect in Leiden The Netherlands on September 28th and 29th, attracted 78 participants from 53 companies in 15 countries.

The initiative to develop a new platform for the Home Garden Sector came from representatives within the industry: Pieterpikzonen in The Netherlands, Tézier Home Garden in France, the Dutch based Sahin, home garden brand of Japanese Takii, the German supplier Gartner Pötschke and Burpee from the U.S.A.

A key theme emerging from the Conference was the importance of communication between the retailer and consumer. Jisk Koopmans and Robert Wacker of Floramedia predicted the use of QR codes (a refined bar-code system) on seed packets within 12 months in order to link consumers with ‘smart’ phones to informational websites supplying details on the culture and use of the varieties on sale.

As internet use continues to increase across Europe (26% of UK homes purchase on line), Rolf Pohlen of German plant retailer ‘Gärtner Pötschke’ suggested that more gardeners are expected to not only make purchases via websites, but also use the internet as a source of information for choosing and growing plants. Renee Shepherd of Renee’s Garden in the USA explained the advantages of communicating with her customers and creating a ‘blog’ on her website to help home gardeners with questions. The ‘Renee’s Garden’ website has created a virtual gardening community with over 1,000 members providing advice and information for home gardeners across the US. Renee also explained the importance of trials in generating reliable information to pass on to her customers and to ensure the best varieties are selected for a range of climatic conditions.

Brenda Horstra of the Dutch Garden Centre Association communicated the latest research on garden trends for 2012 http://fleuroselect.m7.mailplus.nl/nct750049/U6hXNzUH and Peter Seabrook, gardening correspondent for ‘The Sun’ newspaper in the UK, explained how his weekly column in the Saturday issue is the most popular page of the week. Peter’s articles on new plant varieties and products combined with an offer to purchase the promoted items have proved to be reliably successful over a 34 year period. Peter also impressed how important it is to communicate the joys of gardening to the younger generation.

Breeding for the home garden market was explored by Dr. Elisabeth Sahin founder of Sahin Zaden and Wolfgang Fischer of Hild Samen. Both speakers confirmed the potential of breeding for the home garden market, particularly for mail-order and internet trade, but Dr. Sahin questioned the viability of breeding new open pollinated lines for the packet seed trade if wholesale prices did not reflect the costs of research and product development.

The conference as a whole agreed that the pressures of dealing with large multiple retailers with regard to pricing resulted in a reduced choice of new and improved varieties. However, sales via catalogues and the internet demonstrated that home gardeners are interested in purchasing new varieties if they offer novel attributes or improvements in flavour, yield, disease resistance and general performance.

The conference was sponsored by Fleuroselect the international trade organisation http://fleuroselect.m7.mailplus.nl/nct750050/U6hXNzUH which brings together suppliers in all layers in ornamental plant production from breeders to young plant raisers to seed packet suppliers. Fleuroselect has focussed successfully for the last few years on its professional bedding plant segment and is now looking to expand its Home Gardening arm by offering a forum for companies supplying both the retailers and the hobby gardeners with seed and plugs.

Perhaps the most important key communication was that established between the delegates. Networking was quoted as one of the main benefits for attendance and in the final discussions it was agreed unanimously that a definite need exists for an industry platform. A future conference will be planned within the next 12 months.