Experts predict the future of gardening, landscaping
Landscapers, greenhouse owners and field crop producers can’t yet quantify their monetary losses as people remain at home during the coronavirus pandemic and don’t use their services as often during a big sale season of the year — Easter through Mother’s Day.
If the self-isolation drags on past Memorial Day, the loss will be “unfathomable” and state residents could see the beginning of an agricultural collapse, predicted Susan Pronovost, executive director of the Connecticut Greenhouse Growers’ Association.
When asked by Hearst Connecticut Media about the future of gardening and landscaping, Pronovost and others — Stamford resident Melissa Stanley, whose been honing her gardening skills at home, and Maggie Bridge, manager of sales and marketing at Sam Bridge Nursery & Greenhouses in Greenwich, and Maurice “Reese” Keitt, supervisor at New Haven-based EMERGE which aims to reduce recidivism rates with activities like gardening — painted a picture of a future where residents take on more responsibility and businesses adapt to the new needs of the community.
Maggie Bridge
“People are going to be growing less moving forward because the demand is less at this point. You’ll see less from larger growers as well, so when you’re looking for large material a few years from now, like tall Evergreen trees, they’re just not going to be available because they weren’t planted around now and they just take so long to grow.
And I think with fewer independent growers and nurseries, it’s going to be a lot harder to get the biodiversity you need in the landscape.
It could have implications we won’t know about until maybe 20 years later.”
Melissa Stanley
“I’ve already planted like 36 seedlings and I have a ton more to go. I think there’s going to be a large group of people trying to grow food at home and they’re going to need to.
I think we’d be going back to the original times, like more sharecropping. Food could be shared amongst each other safely through social distancing and it definitely would be financially great on people’s pockets.”
Maurice Keitt
“Planting trees and plants should be necessary. That should be pushed around the same way that people are taught how to drive a car.”
Susan Pronovost
“If the pandemic continues into Memorial Day, we’re looking at a total loss of the spring retail season. Memorial Day is usually that noteworthy benchmark of a day. That weekend everybody plants... If they’re not buying vegetable plants and they’re not buying garden plants and our guys have grown for what is normally a consumed product by Memorial Day, I don’t even want to think about what the losses are going to be.
We have a short growing season. There is no way our farmers can recoup their losses in 2020 and what that means is, going into 2021, they won’t have the revenue to mobilize plants for next year. ”