outside in the garden
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Tuesday, July 22, 2003
Who wants to be a gardener?
Last weekend K. told me she considered moving into some sort of gardening business. I remarked she wouldnt make as much money most likely as she does in the computer work she does now, and she agreed.
Then in the Sunday (7-20-03) Hartford Courant was an article (reprinted from the Wash. Post actually) on the huge increase in garden expenditures. The national expenditure jumped by over a billion dollars last year.
This reflects a trend toward more outdoor living, and more spending on it, the article said:
After spending five figures on the trophy kitchen, people are no longer willing to step out into a 9x12 concrete patio overlooking a weedy lawn. -- attributed to Robert Dolibois, vp Amer. Nursery and Landscape Assn.
Related to the trend in more landscaping is the trend toward hiring more people to do the work.
Gone is the joy of gardening, replaced apparently by the joy of looking at something you bought yourself.
Increasingly, baby boomers with appreciating assets and depreciating backs are hiring others to maintain the landscape, from lawn mowing and weed killing to tree and shrub pruning.
Between 1997 and 2002, consumer spending on professional landscape installation tripled, from $3.6 billion to $11.2 billion.
So, K., it looks rather promising for a landscape business. If that's what you had in mind ;-)
Palema
6:48 AM
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