A few years ago, fairy gardening captured the world by storm and the demand for fantastical accessories and tiny plantscapes was in full force. Now, fairy gardening has evolved into miniature gardening, and it’s capturing much of the same market that found appeal in fairy gardening. It’s the latest boom in the small plant category, and we talked to three IGCs to find out how retailers are making the most of “mini.”

What’s the difference?

Fairy gardening and mini gardening share a lot of the same qualities, but it mostly boils down to differences in marketing and accessories (or lack thereof).

“Over the years it’s expanded into so many more categories beyond fairies, whether it’s gnomes, animals or frogs. Just about everything you can think of is now available in miniature,” says Kris Shepard, owner of Caan Floral & Greenhouses.

As time went on, and accessories expanded, the “fairy” moniker tended to overlap with the term “mini gardening.” Shepard says the terminology created more mass appeal, since the fairy gardening category slanted toward the female demographic.

“We probably peaked on fairy gardening three or four years ago. We’ve cut our SKU counts and space allotment for it down some, but it’s still very viable,” Shepard says.

According to Mark Leichty, director of business development at Little Prince of Oregon Nursery, the focus on fairy gardening is more about creating whimsical scenes with little buildings and accessories, whereas miniature gardening focuses more on the plants.

“I think that there are still people involved in fairy gardening, but we don’t get nearly as many calls about it as we do about small plants for small spaces, both indoors and outdoors,” Leichty says.

At Little Prince of Oregon Nursery, the mini gardening category captures a similar demographic as its houseplant category, which primarily tilts toward young women.

“I think that’s the biggest demographic that we’re seeing our biggest sales growth in,” Leichty says.

Like Leichty, Shepard says the demand is hot for plants, and less so for accessories.

“I think the fairy garden or miniature plants haven’t really slowed down, but the accessories have come off of their peak that we had around 2017, 2018. We see it on the decline for sure and we’ve adjusted our inventory levels appropriately,” Shepard says.

Adjusting for demand

Ray Weigand’s Nursery has had an altogether difficult experience with the fairy and miniature gardening category over the past couple of years. Wendy Bohn, event coordinator and online store manager, says the IGC got out of the category last year due to several reasons.

“Unfortunately, kids want what they want and when they were told ‘no’ sometimes helped themselves. Parents would occasionally return the pieces they discovered once home, but that was far and few between,” Bohn says. “Pieces that were played with while their parents shopped created breakage that would just get left sitting there, or we would find them spread out around the nursery.”

As more companies started carrying and making pieces, demand was reduced because accessories were easy to find everywhere. Another issue was the keeping and care of the plants.

“It was a very high labor department between the tiny plants requiring watering twice a day, pricing individual pieces, unpacking them, inventory control and then the constant cleaning and straightening up of the entire area,” Bohn says. “It would take a couple of people a day to manage it. We made the decision to eliminate it and clearance out the remaining pieces.”

The nursery repurposed the category by expanding its water gardening department. The extra space gave way for more lifestyle displays of patio water garden bowls, concrete, tabletop and natural rock fountains, along with natural rock Japanese-style lanterns, Easter Island sculptures and Buddhist-styled Zen pieces, Bohn says.

Supply and support

However, Ray Weigand’s Nursery still carries some of the specialty alpine miniature plants, and many of the annual varieties can still be used for maintaining customers’ existing mini or fairy gardens, Bohn says. An assortment of 2-inch tropical terrarium plants can also be found in the houseplant department for indoor fairy or mini gardens.

At Little Prince of Oregon Nursery, they’re ready to answer the call of customer demand. They grow at least 30 different types of small plants, which work as container houseplants or garden plants. Tender succulent varieties like echeveria and crassula are especially popular in the Pacific Northwest, he says.

“We already had a significant collection of small dwarf plants and we see a growing trend for people who want a small plant, say for a tabletop arrangement or something indoors that’s easy to care for. We’re working at building up our collection of teeny tiny plants,” Leichty says.

At the height of the fairy gardening craze, Ray Weigand’s Nursery held classes to support the hobby. Bohn says they hosted workshops for adults that averaged $50-$75 per person with a max of 30 people per workshop.

They also held less expensive workshops that were simplified and smaller for kids and also offered birthday party packages. The birthday packages included a minimum of 10 attendees, a $25 per person set price, and an 8-inch low bowl terra cotta pot with some plants, a fairy and a couple of accessory pieces.

While they didn’t offer the birthday party packages during the busiest time of year, Bohn notes that they helped fill some space after a majority of the annuals were gone during the slower summer months.

At Caan Floral & Greenhouse, fairy gardening classes were halted due to COVID-19.

“Obviously with the pandemic year, we didn’t really have any of these in-person seminars and workshops like we traditionally had for several years prior. We would hold probably 10 or 12 a year,” Shepard says.

A good way to get involved

Mini gardening can be a good way for garden centers to get children involved because it makes gardening more accessible and less intimidating for them, especially as they grow older. Plus, it can instill a passion for gardening at a young age, Shepard says.

At Little Prince of Oregon Nursery, they often share photos of miniature plants on their social media channels to draw in new gardeners. Mini plants can act as a gateway to gardening because they’re “entry-level” plants, since they are easy to care for. As the mini gardening trend expands, Leichty predicts mini outdoor gardening will take off in the next few years.

With the customer eye on mini plants, the nursery does its best to capture what’s left of the fairy gardening market through search engine optimization via Little Prince of Oregon Nursery’s online store (which launched during the pandemic). ‘Fairy gardening’ is one of the nursery’s main SEO keywords, so when customers search for that, the nursery’s website directs them to miniature plants.

“We have not slowed down this year. This has just been the craziest year imaginable for us. And as we figured out how the nursery industry was going to adapt and react to COVID, we didn’t expect it was going to be so intensely busy and that sales would be so strong,” Leichty says.

When it comes to gardening trends, fairy gardening sure has had a good run. Not to say that the hobby has completely fizzled out, but it is not the big craze it once was. But do not fret; if this was once a reliably profitable category for you, there’s no need to delete the category just yet. Instead, it might just be time to rebrand it and repurpose the plants and materials for new projects. Because tiny gardening, both indoors and out, is having a growth spurt in 2021.

Times are tight

Space, time and resources are always primary concerns for new and experienced gardeners. Not everyone — especially all the new indoor houseplant enthusiasts — has the space for big houseplants or big outdoor gardens. New plant parents, who hungrily acquired more large foliage plants in 2020 than their apartments or schedules could bear, are even starting to take “plant pauses” to reduce their plant care workload.

With growing interest in food gardening — in tight urban garden spaces, patio containers and indoors — aspiring vegetable gardeners run into struggles with standard herbs, veggies and fruits. Even trying to grow one standard-sized determinate tomato indoors can prove space-prohibitive. Forget about the indeterminate tomato types.

With so many new enthusiasts adopting both indoor plants and outdoor gardening as a hobby in 2020, let’s make it as easy as possible for them to stick with it. No matter their available space or time, or lack thereof. The answer to maximizing plant output and enjoyment when space is at a minimum? Tiny plants — both ornamental and edible.

Tiny is big

As soon as they started hitting the market a few years back, I began growing micro-tomatoes and other dwarf vegetable varieties; mostly indoors with grow lighting. You can still get a lot of harvest off mini-veggies and fruits, even though they do not take up much space. This is particularly handy if you are growing indoors on lighted grow shelves or grow tents. If customers are trying to use some of the smaller self-contained LED growing units, they will soon find that miniature varieties will not only grow better small footprints, but do not often take as much light volume to produce fruit, which I have personally found to be true when growing tiny tomatoes such as ‘Micro-Tom.’

Tiny food

I was excited to see a new book coming out in March 2021: “Micro Food Gardening: Project Plans and Plants for Growing Fruits and Veggies in Tiny Spaces” by Jen McGuinness. From miniature herbs and salad greens to tiny strawberry plants, baby beets and mini cabbages, McGuinness shows how micro gardening offers a surprisingly diverse and delicious array of edible opportunities.

Tiny houseplants

I admittedly have a big crush on all things tiny. So I would be remiss if I did not tell you about my new March 2021 book release, “Tiny Plants: Discover the joys of growing and collecting itty bitty houseplants,” which is geared towards the indoor plant parent. It is also going to hit a nerve with anyone interested in terrariums, vivariums or building mini water gardens or tiny indoor plantscapes.

When it comes to gardening under glass, many of the common plants sold at garden centers for terrarium culture simply get too big, or do not really sustain in consistently wet or high-humidity conditions. Do not get me started on all the arid climate succulents that get pitched as great terrarium specimens. That said, there are genetically tiny species of aroids, other popular indoor plant groups, that are well suited to permanently small gardens under glass.

You might not be selling as many itty-bitty houseplants for fairy gardens anymore, but you could be selling more of them as specialty collector specimens or ingredients for stylish mini bios-spheres or truly tiny terrariums. Same goes for some of the containers or decorative items you marketed for fairy gardens.

Big returns

If you are worried about small sales and small margins on small plants, know that perception of value for these less common plant varieties is high. Just because a plant is itty bitty, does not mean it comes with a tiny price tag. I can assure you, all the tiny plants in my collection cost just as much, if not more, than most of my standard houseplants. Not to mention, tiny handmade pottery is also having a high-priced heyday. Similarly, I never expect to pay less for seeds or transplants of mini-vegetable or fruit varieties. Also, shipping tiny plants is much easier; this category of plants and products may open online sales and direct shipping opportunities for your garden center.

Size, and value, are after all in the eye of the beholder.

From handshakes to hard work, understanding the nuanced differences between the American and Latino cultures can lead to a more productive workplace.

This was the message during the webinar “Lost in Translation: The Five Things Businesses Must Understand About the Latinx Culture.” The education was sponsored by the Illinois Landscape Contractors Association (ILCA) and went live earlier in November. Given that Spanish-speakers and Latinx employees make up an enormous amount of the green industry’s workforce, understanding ways to bridge cultural gaps became imperative to speaker Bernie Carranza, the manager at Lotus Farms Chicago.

But before Carranza told attendees some of the lessons he’s learned as both a manager and member of the Latino community, Donna Vignocchi Zych, ILCA president, opened up the webinar.

“I deeply believe that this seminar isn’t just about getting more performance out of our teams,” she says. “It’s about bridging an essential gap and how our different cultures interpret words, actions, gestures, hierarchies and traditions. When employees feel safe, they have the ability to excel and better their collective lives.”

Here’s some of what was discussed during the webinar:

Diverse cultures

First, it’s important to understand exactly what demographic of people you’re referring to when you say “Latino.” In this case, it’s anyone from a Spanish-speaking country. Latinx is a more recent term that replaces the “a” or the “o” in Latina and Latino to make the term gender-neutral. And in his experience, Carranza says people who were originally born in one of these Spanish-speaking countries identify themselves as Hispanic, while those born in the U.S. with familial ties to other countries label themselves as Latino. He made it clear, however, that they can ultimately determine how they’d like to be identified.

The presentation was more geared toward Latinos who had not acculturated to American culture. Many are from Mexico; the complicating factor is that their experiences and cultural influences are different depending on what area of Mexico they’re from.

“The employer, when appropriate, should discuss with their Latino employees the cultural differences that exist and how to make everyone comfortable,” he says. “There are differences in simple, everyday interactions. The more we become familiar with these, the better communication we have.”

As it pertains to showing these employees respect, simple things like hand gestures and body language go a long way. Directly looking at someone’s eyes during serious conversations can be viewed as a challenge to his authority, and handshakes for Latinos are supposed to be soft to the touch rather than firm and rigid. Greetings in American culture are brief and to the point, while in Latino culture, they’re more warm, welcoming and expected.

Employers should talk about those differences and clarify with the employee that they’re not trying to upstage them with direct eye contact, for example.

Education

Latinos prefer cooperative learning environments rather than competitive. As an example, Carranza recalls helping other cousins through school lessons growing up rather than trying to outdo them. This carries into the workplace, as training at a company should be done in more of a group setting than individually.

Carranza recommended allowing for smaller meetings to go on during larger meetings for those who learn most comfortably in a communal way. In his experience, these smaller groups lead to more productivity from his Latino workers as they explain to one another what they’ve learned. This is particularly important should language barriers exist at the company.

Another challenge is understanding that Latinos “don’t know,” even when they do, Carranza says. This means that they’d rather not embarrass somebody leading a meeting by upstaging them with the correct answer, even if it means sitting on vital information. This can be avoided by encouraging them to speak up often.

“We should encourage them to ask questions,” Carranza says. “Our style is more formal. What that means is that if you’re the presenter, if you’re the authority of the person presenting, there is this tendency to not interrupt you.”

Understanding ambition

Latinos often credit their achievements to fate or religious circumstances rather than their own ability, Carranza says.

“We look down at our shoes — we downplay our successes,” he says. “When something good happens to us, we don’t credit our own hard work.”

He said because of this humility, Latinos are often labeled as unambitious. Some miss out on raises or bonuses because of this trait. Their politeness can lead to Americans viewing them as subservient.

As Carranza put it, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and sometimes, people with bad manners get what they want. Latinos’ ambition for career progression is demonstrated quietly, he says, and “the key for you is recognizing that ambition and directing it.”

Carranza says sometimes, Latinos struggle to speak up when things get difficult because they have adopted a culture of hard work and pride in their company. He said it’s up to employers to listen to employees and ask them proactively how the work is going.

“Working hard is in our culture, it’s in our DNA,” he says. “What can we do? We encourage them; we empower them.”

Jimmy Miller is assistant editor at our sister publication, Lawn & Landscape magazine.

As IGCs and other small businesses forge into 2021, many are reporting record numbers of job openings, which retailers are finding difficult to fill.

According to the National Federation of Independent Business' (NFIB) latest jobs report released on Dec. 3, an uncertain economy is presenting a slew of hiring challenges.

“Small businesses are doing their best to end the year on a good note, but the economic recovery remains uneven with some industries near full recovery and others still struggling,” said NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg in the report. “Finding qualified workers for open positions has only gotten worse as the pandemic caused an even tighter labor market. A surge in the labor force participation rate would be welcome news to small employers.”

We gathered some of the key findings from the report examining the month of November.