If the U.S. landscape industry is to continue to prosper, operators must look for more environmentally friendly growing and selling methods, according to one of the industry’s top figures.
Robert Dolibois, executive vice president of the American Nursery and Landscape Association spoke last week at Texas A&M University’s horticultural sciences department.
He said the landscape 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.
As a result, the
industry must pursue the next generation, 18 to
30 years old, who are beginning to maintain their own homes,
Dolibois said.
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.
"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."
Loading...