Getting back to roots

It’S just getting better and better for Irish horticulture. Hot on the heels of the World Association of Floral Artists World Flower Show during the summer, last month Ireland played host to the International Garden Centre Congress.

The International Garden Centre Association exists to provide a forum for information exchange to benefit independent garden retailers worldwide. Rachel Doyle, from the Arboretum Garden Centre in Carlow, is the current President of the International Garden Centre Association. An annual Congress is held for one week each year in a different host country. Previous host countries have included Australia, Germany and Italy.

Over 200 delegates from 22 countries visited Ireland on a five-day itinerary, as part of the Congress. The event, supported by Bord Bia, which is the government body responsible for Horticulture in Ireland, is designed to provide international garden centre owners with an insight into Ireland’s horticulture industry, valued at an estimated €500m, about 25% of which is plants. A programme of activities was coordinated to showcase the best of Ireland’s garden centres, gardens, horticulture producers and food and drink industry in counties such as Dublin, Wicklow, Wexford, Carlow, and Kilkenny.

The delegates, who travelled from all over the world, took part in educational study tours and a comprehensive networking programme, meeting horticulture experts and growers and learning about the Bord Bia Awarded garden centres and Bord Bia Quality Assured nurseries. The week-long event commenced with a gala dinner at the Mansion House in Dublin attended President Michael D Higgins.

The eight garden centres visited showcased the best of what garden centres have to offer in Ireland and how they have developed and evolved since the Congress was first held in Ireland in 1999.

The horticulture production sites visited (Keelings in Dublin and O’Connor Nurseries in Wexford) exposed the Congress delegates to the top class horticulture producers and production facilities in Ireland in both edible and ornamental crop production. In addition a display of Irish grown plants from some of our best growers was organised for delegates in Kilkenny and provided the opportunity to network.

Garden centres in Ireland have changed a lot in the last 20 years —in many ways but not always, for the better. The actual “garden centre” as a concept with plants grown in containers and available 12 months of the year is a relatively modern phenomenon. Before that plants were grown in nurseries and sold only during the ‘bare root season’ which runs from November to late March. We have gone from trekking around muddy fields to source plants during the winter months to enjoying a full lunch followed by a decaf skinny cappuccino as our plants are being gift wrapped and placed in the car. in the destination centre where you can also buy anything from a goldfish to a sofa for the living room and everything in between.

The congress is a great forum to discuss and swap ideas. This year it was great exposure for the Irish garden centre industry.

But are Irish garden centres developing the right way? Are lifestyle centres the way forward? Market forces, consumer demand and schemes such as the garden centre quality awards have directed the garden centre industry in this way. Over 20 years ago when I was studying in the UK I was awestruck by the size of the garden centres and the range of products on offer. In Cork at the time we had Nangles, the Elm Tree, Munster Seeds, Atkins and a progressive centre was being developed by Margaret Griffin in Dripsey. Of the first four mentioned, all were very much plant and ‘true gardening’ oriented centres; all bar Nangles are gone. Nangles which is and has been a Cork institution in gardening has gone through the transition from nursery to top class garden centre having started as a specialist rose nursery. Griffins on the other hand was started in the modern era and has not just developed as a top class ‘destination’ centre but it has indeed led the way nationally.

Ironically during the period that Ireland lost many plant centres and gained many lifestyle centres the UK industry has done some soul searching and has come to the conclusion that plants are what has been missing in many of their centres. During this recession which is now hopefully over, garden centres in England were dropping in turnover, so too in Ireland. No surprise there you would think except that garden centres are supposed to increase in turnover during times of recession. The logic being that people don’t change homes but we do invest in them so DIY, paint and gardening are supposed to do well. A closer look at the UK figures makes interesting reading as not every facet of the industry was down. Spend on plants, seeds, compost and garden tools were up and many of the more plant focused garden centres bucked the trend and were actually up on sales. The industry may have thought the future was in lifestyle and ‘stuff’ as I call it, however the market told the gardeners otherwise; garden centres should be just that.

Like in any industry the quickest to adapt have been the most successful and we are well served in Ireland with top class growers supplying excellent and nearly exclusively, independent garden centres around the country. Also like all industries the threat from imports and discount stores is very real. I urge anybody doing anything in the garden to support the Irish industry for many reasons, not least of them being plants that are grown locally by experienced nurserymen stand a much better chance of thriving in your garden than plants which have travelled half way across the world in refrigerated transport.