Chelsea Flower Show-fueling UK's gardening frenzy?
24 May 2004
By F. Brinley Bruton

Britain's gardening business is in full-bloom.
Nothing illustrates the point better than the Chelsea Flower Show, an extravagant yearly marriage held between green-thumbed aristocracy and mass consumerism.

Tens of thousands, including Britain's Queen Elizabeth, will crowd exhibits showcasing both trendsetting and traditional horticultural happenings this week.

Visitors will find shrubs, trees and fragrant flowers. They will peer at display gardens named "From Merlin to Medicine" and "From Darkness to Light". Many will spend their money in the commercial add-ons that populate the show's outskirts, buying fountains, garden furniture and grills.

The intense interest in events such as the Chelsea Flower Show, first staged in 1862, is part of a larger phenomenon, as house prices rocket and a rash of gardening shows urge viewers to spruce-up their gardens.

In fact, legendarily house-proud Britons invested about 4.5 billion pounds ($8.05 billion) in their gardens in 2003, up almost 50 percent from 1999, according to market research firm Mintel.

"People are likely to spend more time in their garden. The 'patch' is beginning to be more part of the house," said Peter Hulatt, the managing director of Camden Garden Centre in north London, who has been in the business for about 20 years.

And it's the younger generations feeding the growth.

"A few years back the only people were the over-50s, but in the last three to four years a huge raft of programmes on TV had an effect in bringing age down to the 20's, 30's and 40's," he said.

The shows range from the staid 36-year-old "Gardeners' World" to the more proactive "Ground Force", whose red-headed presenter, Charlie Dimmock, transforms people's gardens, including that of former South African President Nelson Mandela.

The typical gardener's transition from pottering retiree to tinkering young urbanite has caught the attention of big business.

Chief among them is Marshalls, which makes landscape, garden and patio products from concrete, clay and stone. It earns about half it money from gardening products.

This year Marshalls did the paving for several displays at the show.

"(Chelsea) has been very important for us, it allows us to show how innovative we can be, new technologies, new types of concrete, new types of casting," marketing director Chris Harrop said from the show.

Builders merchant Travis Perkins, materials firms Aggregate Industries and Wolseley also stand to benefit from the gardening boom.

"There has been a move towards spending more money on the home," said Darren Shaw, construction analyst from Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein.

"The garden is part of the growth, the garden is part of the home-owners investment," he said.
In the end, it is about people feeling comfortable sinking their hands in the dirt and standing barefoot in the grass, said Camden Garden Centre's Hulatt.

"There is a lot of demystifying going on - a lot of people felt they could not do difficult things in the garden. But now, people are beginning to understand that they can."