grow your own Planet friendly gardening
Glee event director, Matthew Mein, examines the drive in demand for natural garden products, as the market for planet-friendly gardening gets set for rapid growth
F
lick through the pages of any trade or consumer horticultural magazine and you're likely to see a mention of
the ‘trend' for green gardening. In fact, far from being a passing fad, the shiſt to planet- friendly gardening started in the 1980s when organic TV gardener Geoff Hamilton took the helm of BBC Gardeners' World. Three decades on, in a world where concern about the planet is escalating, and politicians are declaring a climate emergency, eco-friendly gardening is firmly engrained in British culture. With a growing band of consumers choosing to grow flowers, fruit and vegetables organically, it's no wonder that demand for natural plant feeds and pest controls is skyrocketing. However, the organic movement has evolved, to encompass soaring interest in vegan gardening. Championed predominantly by a younger generation of eco-savvy consumers, the number of shoppers who are switching to a plant-only, planet-friendly diet is on the up – and that's driving sales of vegan gardening goods, with this fledgling category set to expand exponentially. The figures speak for themselves. In 2016, The
Vegan Society revealed there were 540,000 vegans living in the UK. In the space of just three years, that figure has soared to an estimated 3.5million vegan Brits, according to research by
Comparethemarket.com, published in The Independent. According to The Vegan Society, in 2018, the UK launched more vegan products than any other nation. Demand for meat-free food in the UK increased by 987 per cent in 2017 alone. Last year, the value of the UK plant-based food market hit £443million, with the society claiming that veganism “now gets almost three times more interest than vegetarian and gluten-free searches”. It's no wonder that manufacturers are clamouring to capture a share of the vegan pound. With the UK population about to hit
67million, vegans remain a minority, and that's why synthetic plant feed and pest control products still dominate the market. We look at the latest developments in the sector, and investigate how the market for fertilisers and bug killers is being shaken-up by the unstoppable rise of veganism. One company that's riding the crest of a wave
from growth in the number of vegans is Natural Grower. It's a supplier of organic fertiliser that's free from any animal matter and made from a bi-product of an anaerobic digester that is fed
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www.gardencentreupdate.com GCU Spring 2020
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