Kate Spirgen
Editor’s note: Only responses from garden centers that sell houseplants are included in this report.
It’s no surprise that garden centers saw stellar sales in their houseplant departments during 2020 as COVID-19 had customers spending more time at home. Building on the momentum driven by plant parents, biophilic design trends and plant collectors, the houseplant craze was driven to new heights last year.
In March, we polled more than 250 independent garden center owners and managers in the U.S. and Canada to see how houseplant popularity has hit their stores.
Read on to see how demand, sales, prices and more have changed since last year.
When compared with last year, it’s easy to see that IGCs saw a higher percentage of sales coming from houseplants and related indoor growing supplies. Garden centers seeing 20% or more of sales coming from indoor growing jumped up 18 percentage points this year over last.
IGCs that saw an increase of 15% or more in their houseplant departments jumped up nearly 25 percentage points this year over last and they aren’t planning to slow down any time soon. More than 80% of those surveyed say they increased houseplant offerings in 2020 and plan to do the same in 2021. But although sales and offerings were up, garden centers didn’t increase their prices much more than they did in 2019.
