Urban Garden Trends by GASA GROUP
Urban Garden will become one of the strongest garden trends in the coming years. The trend is fuelled by our growing urbanisation, the financial crisis, the green wave and the desire for sustainability and naturalness, a focus on healthy living and an increasing desire for getting back to basics. GASA GROUP follows the trend closely and sees a great market potential.
Urban Garden creates new growth potential
For many years, the plant and flower industry has focused on home and garden owners, thus “overlooking” urban consumers, but a soaring demand for green solutions for urban environments opens up brand-new possibilities for the industry. GASA GROUP is a leading distributor and player in Europe when it comes to developing new sales concepts for the speciality and retail trades alike and has been closely following the Urban Garden trend in recent years:
“Urban Garden is no longer reserved for first movers and trendy city people. It has become a lifestyle. We're seeing more widespread interest in urban garden environments, which is why we’re now taking the initiative to develop new products and more concepts aimed at urbanites. The plant industry’s new target group, the urban dweller, seeks inspiration from many sources, which gives rise to a number of challenges but also paves the way for brand-new possibilities for the industry – and we must learn to follow them up,” says Jes Grandt Nielsen, Marketing and Project Manager at GASA GROUP.
A multi-directional trend
GASA GROUP has identified a number of different subtrends within Urban Gardening. According to Jes Grandt Nielsen, one of major trends is Rooftop Gardening, where urbanites join forces in organised communities and grow local products atop buildings. Another rapidly growing trend is rooted in the Guerrilla Gardening underground movement which plants green flowerbeds at otherwise ugly urban spots on secret nightly raids.
Other new directions within the Urban Garden trend are the more structural and ethical solutions where plants are incorporated into the architectural design of entire buildings or placed on isolated, vertical walls, known as Vertical Gardening. This direction is closely associated with Architectural Gardening, with plants leaving a living impression on the public space. And finally, My Personal Garden is considered one of the strongest tendencies within Urban Gardening. There is an increasing interest in growing one’s own vegetables on windowsills or balconies. There is also the entirely new element of having mobile gardens you take with you wherever you go.
On top of developments in the plant industry
”Of course, not all trends are equally commercial. But we think that rooftop gardens as well as vertical and mobile gardens have interesting potential, and we want to inspire our customers and producers to discuss the new possibilities with this initiative. By keeping abreast of developments within Urban Gardening, we also stay at the cutting edge of developments in the plant-growing industry,” says Jes Grandt Nielsen.