Photos of ficuses and monsters have replaced coffee and beautiful breakfasts in social media feeds. We figured out why home flowers have become a trend among millennials
How the market is growing
Water, sprinkle, rearrange closer to the light, check each leaf, wipe the dust – this is a typical morning for a home flower lover. They call daily rituals a new form of meditation, and their collection may be several hundred pieces.
In 2019, a record number of Americans aged 18 to 34 took up gardening, including houseplants. The pandemic has greatly affected the sale of flowers: being locked in apartments, city residents began to buy them online. In April 2020, Sill online store sales increased by more than 50% compared to March. “The growth that we are seeing is definitely higher than what we planned for this year,” said project founder Elisa Blank. In the US online store Etsy, the number of requests for “live plants” increased by 82% compared to last year. Jessie Waldman, director of marketing and online sales for Pistils Nursery, said that six years ago she asked an employee who bought plants for Pistils Nursery if they could add more colorful monstera to the assortment, but she replied that they were difficult to sell. “Now we get messages on Instagram almost every day. When we get one plant, I don’t post it on social media because the volume of requests gets too big to handle,” says Jesse.
The growth in demand leads to an increase in prices: in some American online stores, a motley monstera can be bought for $ 200, if of course you are lucky to find them. Monstera gourmet seeds have more than doubled in price over the past year, while 20 years before that their price had hardly changed.
Collectors can join waiting lists to buy rare items and participate in auctions. In August 2020, an anonymous New Zealander paid NZ$8 ($150) for an “extremely rare variegated Rhaphidophora tetrasperma” on the Trade Me auction site. It was the most expensive plant sold on the platform.
Who sets the trends
The landscaping trend has been around for several years. In many ways, its development was helped by the book “Urban Jungle: How to create a cozy interior with the help of plants”, published in 2016. It was written by Igor Yosifovich and Judith de Graaf, the founders of the Urban Jungle Bloggers project. The book is rather a beautiful album with tips on proper care, ideas for location, decor, furniture and color combinations, and most importantly, photographs of plant lovers’ houses, looking at which you understand how much this hobby affects their owners. 1,1 million users have already subscribed to the project’s Instagram account.
The trend is to have a lot of plants, literally turning your apartment into an urban jungle. Plant lovers even have the expression “Plant lady is the new cat lady” (Russian “A woman with flowers is a new woman with cats”). At the same time, they should be diverse, which means they require different care and special treatment, so they are often given names and talk like with intelligent beings: “Owners give their favorite plants a variety of names: Andrea the Giant (triangular spurge), Marvin (rubber ficus ) and Rybka (dracaena). By naming a plant, you become related to it. It will become a member of the family, and you will begin to understand it better, ”say Josifovich and de Graaf.
Recently, there has been a growing demand for flowers from small shops – chain stores have little choice, because it is unprofitable for them to grow complex plants on a large scale. And niche projects please not only with the choice, but also with additional services. For example, Plants for friends and Plant Me are not just stores, but gardening projects. Their employees landscape the spaces and help care for the plants. Another project – PRO.Änta’s – is both a showroom and a platform for photo projects, events and workshops.
Individual enthusiasts create accounts not only for beautiful pictures, but also for advice. For example, how to make friends with plants and domestic animals, or about the experiments of scientists.
The movement has also moved offline: collectors meet at swaps — meetings where they exchange grown plants and share their care experience. In our country, they are held by such stores as Plants for friends and Plant me.
popularity phenomenon
Plants improve air quality – it’s no secret. But this is far from the main reason why millennials plant green spaces. According to a SWNS survey, 75% of young people aged 25 to 39 buy plants to see if they are responsible enough to have a real pet. However, 67% of respondents still noted that growing plants was more difficult than they expected.
51% believe plants enhance the overall look and feel of a home. This is true – you can pick up flowers or indoor trees that are suitable for any interior. As Marey, designer, photographer, blogger and subject of Urban Jungle, says, “Plants bring freshness to an interior. It’s nice to be at the same time inside the house and among nature.” Plus, they look great in photos. The hashtag #urbanjungle on Instagram now has 4,9 million posts.
If the store does not have a suitable plant, hobbyists grow it themselves, and this is not always a simple planting of seeds. For example, one of the ways to grow an avocado looks like this: you need to remove the stone from the fruit, make holes in it, insert wooden sticks into them, fill a jar or other container with water, immerse the stone in it so that the water covers only half, using the sticks as a support . Using the hashtags #avacadoplants #avacadoseed, enthusiasts share their successes and watch with excitement how sprouts appear.
That the pandemic has led to an increase in the popularity of plants is not surprising. “I think the fear of being locked up within four walls for a long time provokes a desire to create conditions that are at least remotely reminiscent of natural ones – to furnish an apartment with living plants. It also fits into the modern fashion for everything “green” and “eco”. People understand that they will spend a lot of time at home, so they create such a kind of home comfort. Plus, you can do at your leisure transplanting plants from pot to pot, digging in the ground, that is, doing manual labor, which distracts from general panic and reduces stress levels, ”comments Alina Akkieva, psychologist, member of the Professional Psychotherapeutic League. This is confirmed by the SWNS survey: for 81% of respondents, adding plants to their space had a positive impact on their mental and physical health.
Flower owners are increasingly referring to themselves as their “parents,” with the #plantparenthood hashtag popular on Instagram.
“During the period of the pandemic and quarantine, the general background of anxiety has greatly increased. Mentally, people regress, that is, they become more nervous, anxious, infantile, some deep fears rise. Against this background, the feeling of fear for one’s life and loneliness intensifies, a desire appears to receive and give care. Someone gets pets, and someone prefers plants – they create a feeling of the presence of a living being, but at the same time they do not cause trouble (they do not gnaw on furniture, do not make noise, do not get dirty). They can be left for a long time in which case and not worry that they will die. Therefore, it is now becoming fashionable to call yourself the parents of not only dogs, but also ficus, for example. In psychology, this phenomenon is called “displacement”. When desire shifts from one object to another (for example, instead of children, people give birth to animals or plants and call themselves their parents).
An interesting fact: back in 1994 in the film “Leon” the main character (Jean Reno) has only a single friend – a flower in a pot. He explains this to young Matilda (Natalie Portman) like this: “This is my friend. Always in a good mood, does not ask questions. And he’s like me, see? Rootless.” The hired killer has difficulty building human relationships, so his unfulfilled desire for intimacy is shifted to the plant,” says Alina Akkieva.
Be that as it may, the new millennial hobby really helps to cope with difficulties, as Josifovich and de Graaf write in their new book Okay Jungle!: “We realized that plants are needed for well-being, positive attitude, happiness, love and creativity. Plants teach us an important lesson: life changes with the seasons. Everything happens to us for a reason, and bad things eventually come to an end. Accept your love for plants, as you accept life with all its fuss, variety and multicolor.
Subscribe also to the Trends Telegram channel and stay up to date with current trends and forecasts about the future of technology, economics, education and innovation.