The U.S. landscape industry has enjoyed decades of prosperity, but that will continue only if operators pursue their customers, look for more environmentally friendly growing and selling methods and learns problem-solving skills.
That’s according to Robert Dolibois, executive vice president of the American Nursery and Landscape Association headquartered in Washington, D.C. He was the keynoter Wednesday for the Ellison Chair in International Floriculture Distinguished Lecture Series of Texas A&M University’s horticultural sciences department.
Dolibois said his organization represents some 2,300 companies that provide products and services to about 80 million U.S. households, but he said the relative good fortune of the industry faces several challenges that must be overcome for future success.
For one, the industry “has ridden on the back of the Boomer behemoth” for the past 15 years, he said, but now must realize that the primary purchasing population – the middle-aged households – are diminishing.
The industry certainly must pursue the Gen Y’ers – those who now are 18 to 30 years old – as they transition toward maintaining their own homes, Dolibois said, but the industry must also look for ways to extend the boomers’ interest in buying plants and landscape items.
“In all instances, we need to reverse an alarming trend of reducing the proportion of plant materials relative to hard-scaping (using non-plant materials) in residential and commercial design,” he noted.
That might be helped via new programs such as the Sustainable Sites Initiative being developed in Austin in cooperation with the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and the U.S. Botanical Gardens, he said.
A goal of that program is to develop criteria along with the green-building efforts that would set standards for what is necessary to install a “green” landscape, Dolibois noted.
That plays into “embracing sustainability” which he said is another vital key for the industry’s success.
“At this point, it (sustainability) is invoked as both blessing and curse,” Dolibois said. “It is time for us to more fully pursue the concepts, define its threats and opportunities and, in significant measure, declare industry ownership of its implications for us.
“Let’s re-engineer, re-use, revert and recycle like we never have before,” he said.
But pursuing customer groups and stepping up environmental efforts, along with possible increased regulation and the industry’s lack of research and development funds, can only be met with better problem-solving skills, Dolibois said.
“Our defense must now be built on hard data and communicated by industry business owners in their terms with authentic examples, repeatedly,” he stressed. “Such a defense will require much more research and understanding than we currently enjoy.”
Dolibois said meeting the industry’s challenges successfully is achievable “provided we build on a strong foundation of collaboration.”