We’ve been doing some digging…
It comes as no surprise that people have turned to gardening in the recent weeks and months whilst at home during lockdown, particularly with the weather being so nice!
But we wanted to find out just how popular it had become. We specialise in working with home and garden brands, and we’ve been hearing from clients recently about how well sales have been going with more and more people getting their gardens in order, so we did a bit of research. We’ve seen this in particular with Vegepod and Aerobin which both provide products for self-sufficient, sustainable lifestyles and growing your own food.
We had a look into the Google search volumes for March and April this year, vs the same period in 2019 and found that this year
Google searches for the phrase “gardening for beginners” were 81% higher in March this year than they were in March 2019. In April, during lockdown, the year-on-year increase grew to a staggering 184%.
More specifically, searches for compost were 809% higher this April than they were in April 2019. Our newest client, Aerobin Hot Composters, sold out on pre-orders alone with people seeking new ways of composting waste to landfill with bin collections being cancelled across the country during the pandemic. A traditional composting bin can take anything from six months to two years to transform waste into compost. Aerobin hot composting drastically speeds up that process and can do it in as little as 12 weeks.
Continuing along the lines of self-sufficiency, we found that in March this year there was a 420% spike in searches for “how to grow your own food” versus March 2019, which interestingly changed to a, still higher than usual, 180% increase for April year-on-year. This perhaps suggests that during the panic buying pre-lockdown phase people were searching for alternative means of self-sufficiency.
Another client to also notice this is Hillier, which owns 17 garden centres and holds the world record for the most consecutive gold medals at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Vegetable seed sales across March and April for Hillier were up almost 20% year-on-year, despite the centres being closed for most of this period as well having two weeks where there were no sales at all.
Due to the recent increased interest, Vegepod which makes self-contained raised garden beds has brought forward the launch of its new Vegebag, which has been shortlisted for the prestigious RHS Chelsea Garden Product of the Year Award. The bag is ideal for gardeners with small spaces and means that even those with a small balcony can start growing their own food during isolation.
Take a look here to find out more about how we help brands in the gardening sector.
