HortiTrends Weekly Comment and News Digest - April 8th

As an on-line business trade fairs are our lifeblood and events like Meet 30 Nurseries @ Trolley Fairs on Tuesday, April 9th and last Saturdays GLDA Seminar give us the opportunity to meet with the professionals who are at the coalface of Horticulture. Whether its meeting with advertisers or sourcing news from attendees or visitors, its that face to face contact that is all important.

The nurseries exhibiting at tomorrows fair are in a conundrum of sorts. If its a good day they will be busy at the actual nurseries and will have itchy feet to get back to base. Also if the sun shines the attendance will be lower as Garden Centres and Landscapers will be wary of taking time of off to attend.

Its a gamble for all involved but in our opinion a worthwhile one. Plant buyers get the opportunity to benchmark existing suppliers against the competition and also further develop that relationship. The garden centres and landscape buyers are less needy when it comes to knowing what they want. The sector of plant buyers where more opportunity exists for the nurseries to make further inroads are the smaller DIY chain and shops. They are frequent visitors to this site and are looking and learning about, what the garden centres are doing. We wrote an article in last months 'Irish Hardware Magazine' outlining what they need to do to improve their plant offering. Our main advice was to leave the plant buying responsibility to a good partner nursery who will have all the right contacts within the sector. There is still work to be done to nurture this group into buying more Irish grown stock and getting them to attend the Trolley Fairs is an ongoing important part of the marketing for the event. The GCAI are also holding an a side event at the fair for garden centres attending which will be of interest to existing and potential new members.

We will have a full report on last weekends GLDA Seminar next week

News comes that Park-Promoting Charity GreenSpace Ceases Trading. This was an organisation that will be sorely missed for that sector as they were doing important work in raising awareness among the trade and the general public of the importance of parks. A victim of cutbacks and also the fact that no other trade organisations were either interested or had the time/resources to carry it on.

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