Gardening bloomed during the pandemic, now garden centers want to keep interest up

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Garden centers enjoyed a pandemic boom, particularly with millennials, as people looked for outdoor activities during lockdowns. Now, garden centers are hoping to keep that interest up, even as they deal with higher costs, a tough hiring environment, and ever more volatile weather. The Garden Center Group, which tracks sales of about 125 centers, said sales are up by about 25% compared with 2019, but stayed flat between 2022 and 2023. Spending on lawn and gardening activities continued to rise, with an average household spend of $616 in 2022, an increase of $74 from 2021. Younger households in the 18- to 44-year-old age group saw larger increases in spending than older households. The spring season is crucial since garden centers can make about 60% of sales during the 12 weeks of spring. At Flowercraft in San Francisco, houseplants, vegetable starts, and citrus trees are selling well as the spring season, the biggest season by far for garden centers, gets underway. Although spring hasn’t quite kicked into high gear yet in San Francisco, smaller items such as four-inch plants or six plants in a pack are selling better than bigger one-gallon to 15-gallon plants. At the East Coast Garden Center in Millsboro, Delaware, higher costs are another issue. To offset higher costs, the center had to raise prices. For example, a one-gallon flower was around five dollars, now it's more than six dollars. Unpredictable weather has also been a challenge that has affected sales, including droughts in some parts of the country while record-setting rain flooded other areas. And like many industries, garden centers have been hit hard by worker shortages, with many now having to offer higher pay and benefits to attract new employees, further stressing their bottom lines. This article was provided by The Associated Press.