The Baby Boomers
The following is a presentation given by a garden store owner at the American Nursery and Landscape Association's Winter Session in
The “Baby Boomers”
Here we come.
One by one
Arriving every seven seconds,
Strung out along the roadway for the next ten years,
Crossing over the line to our next millennium,
Doing our last great marathon,
Clutching our scuba tanks and racquetball bags,
Florescent, downloaded, tanned, toned and tuned.
Being dragged, kicking and screaming
Into this dark world of OLD AGE.
And now, these Baby Boomers
On the face of the earth, will turn their giant wealth, riveting attention,
And explosive energy to their final frontier;
retirement, relaxation and leisure,
And those words will never have the same meaning again.
For all of us in the gardening, flower and plant business,
We know they will come to us because do we dare say it;
OLD PEOPLE GARDEN MORE.
And we have been getting ready for them.
And this ain’t gonna be no grandma’s garden.
Because this is the dawning of the age of the boomer garden.
The three minute instant flower bed.
“Just do it.”
A Monet landscape shrink wrapped with video.
“The apple tree must be ready to harvest ten days after I plant it.
Please no wooden picket fences to paint. I want the plastic, but scuff it up a bit.
I want the old world Italian look.”
“No time to plant corn seed.
Six corn plants please maybe with those little corns already on them?”
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Who are these "baby boomers"?
For the local garden store owner, baby boomers like Frank and Marie Pennington, represent almost half of his sales. He knows that Art and Marie have the income to buy his plants and plant care products and that they are convinced of the health benefits of gardening. The price is not always as important to them as the quality of the plants and whether the plants are locally grown and are as organic as possible. 
Frank and Marie trust the garden shop owner as they have been a customer for many years.
They want to be “told like it is” on the benefits of plants and flowers that they purchase.
They do not do a lot of gardening these days as the knees are getting sore and the body is getting a little run down, but they understand that working even in a little garden can soothe the soul
Frank and Marie Pennington grew up in a small Indiana town in the late 1940's. Frank can still remember when the day when their first television was delivered to their house. He would join his brothers and sisters as they set up the TV trays on Sunday evening to watch “The Lone Ranger”. Later his parents would join them for the “Ed Sullivan Show”.
After dinner, Frank would gather with the rest of the kids on his block to play “kick the can”. He was a boy scout and played little league baseball after school. He went off to college and got his degree in engineering, joining a local company designing highways for the State.
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The Earth Stopped Rotating
Young Frank will never forget that Sunday evening in 1956. They all were sitting around the television watching the "Tommy Dorsey Show".
All of a sudden, this freak appeared with a guitar, sideburns and huge eyes. He was an alien for sure who invaded the serenity of their 
Frank's parents looked in horror at this spectacle, mumbling angrily at the screen and yelling that this freak should be banned right there and now from anything television, anything American. Frank was disturbed inside. He did not know what he felt but he felt something beautiful and he yearned to see more. Frank sisters started to scream and moan as they danced on the carpet to those strange sounds and this freak who just invaded the calm of their Indiana family parlor.
For those three minutes, the world stopped rotating. The earth split open.
From those minutes to the end of time, there would be forever, Frank’s parents standing on one side of the divide and their kids standing on the other side.
Everything changed.. The baby boomers culture was born.
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Marie’s father was a manager of a local shoe factory. Her mom was an elementary school teacher in a nearby town. Marie, as a young girl, attended church regularly and was part of the choir. In the summers, Marie was a camp counselor for kids from a a local Indian tribe. She met Frank at a “sock hop” dance. She was a cheerleader at her high school, wearing the uniform of pleated skirt and saddle shoes
Frank and Marie were married in a full catholic ceremony. They purchased a house and five acres in a new development. Over they years, they raise three children and educated them at the state university. They now have four grandchildren.
Frank retired from his job and started a home business making boogie boards, selling them at local flea markets and at surf shops along the
Marie teaches part time now and is a planning commissioner for the city government. She has been a student of Yoga for many years and attends classes at an athletic club nearby. Every few years, Frank and Marie select a worldwide relief agency to travel to a foreign county and volunteer their skills helping native populations improve their lives. The grand kids come over often and Frank loves to show them that he can still kick the butts of their dads on the basketball court!
The house and acres got too much to keep up after the kids went off to college, feeding the horses and mowing the big lawn. They moved into a small house in town. They spend a lot of time re-modeling their little house and gardening a small plot in their backyard. In the cold winter months, they travel to the
Frank and Marie do not have a lot in savings after raising three kids and putting them through college and the stock market crash in 2009 hit them hard. That is not as important to them as it was with their fathers and mothers. They have enough financial freedom to achieve what they want in their retirement years. They are individuals and like to be regarded as that. They are looking for a great balance in their later years with a true appreciation the health of their body and soul, nature and the natural.
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Profile of the Boomers
This material was gathered and compressed from many sources from many authors, publications and presentations. If you find your words in these profiles, please contact me and I will be happy to attribute your name to the comments.
People born between (and including) 1946 and 1964
They are not interested in pursuing a traditional retirement of leisure
The majority of boomers plan to keep working and earning in retirement, but will do so by cycling between periods of work and leisure,
They are leaving and buying new (often smaller) homes, moving to senior communities or even deciding to stay
A baby boomer woman turns 50 every 14 seconds.
They are turning 60 years old at the rate of nearly 8,000 a day
They are changing their dietary and lifestyle habits.
They are reducing their caffeine consumption, switching to organic foods, driving ecologically friendly vehicles or opting for recycled paper products.
They are exercising more at home
They welcome products that supported their alternative lifestyle, from mortgages on ecologically built and run houses to foods grown exclusively in organic gardens.
The boomers used to say:
"All I want is all there is and then some."
Now we find that their spending patterns are changing.
They are delaying typical signs of maturity; defy the age purchases and markets normally associated with older adults,
They increasingly seek comfort and convenience, and show more interest in buying "experiences" over tangible products
Single Boomers will form faux families to share daily living
They are moving starting a revival of non-contact, less demanding sports options like tether ball, flag tag, and hopscotch.
They will now pursue long-dormant artistic interests in music, painting and writing that were sidelined by the demands of work and child care.
Folklore/Storytelling returns with a modern twist as a social outlet that allows Boomers to connect with children, grandchildren, each other in response to ubiquitous, impersonal electronic media.
The streets where Boomers live will pop up based on niche interests, with cul de sacs dedicated to a single activity—marathon mews, aerobic avenue, song street, hiking heights, golf grove, tennis terrace.
The fountain of youth is at hand for them with custom-tailored vitamin elixirs and beverages designed to add what’s missing
This generation controls 77% of all financial assets of the world!
Boomers represent a whopping 26 percent of the population,
78.2 million Americans
20 years from now, in 2030, almost three-quarters of all boomers, or 57.8 million, will still be alive. That's a lot of years to spend gardening or golfing.
78% of them have made online purchases
"They want to start a business. They want to travel. They want to play a musical instrument. They want to give back to society."
There are increasing older "snowbird" workers who switch back and forth between jobs in its northern and southern store locations at different times of the year.
Boomers are more accustomed to changing partners. Their thirst for new romance is less likely to diminish in the quarter-century or more that may remain after they turn 60. They will look for someone to join them, the professor said, in exercise, cooking, gardening and traveling, among other habits old-age boomers are likely to indulge.
How shall we sell to the Boomers?
In advertising and publicity, use 12-point type, without serifs, to make reading easier. Use plenty of white space around copy so your message stands out.
"What's wrong with this world? For starters, are the words are too damned small. See this sentence? How could you? Too damned small. How about the morning paper? Forget it. Too damned small. The directions on your jar of organic herbal laxative? Too. Damned. Small. And you are not going to try squinting (It causes wrinkles) If you can't read it, by gum, you just won't buy it. And if you don't buy organic herbal laxative, nobody will. And if nobody buys it...well you see where this is going."
"Why We Buy"
by Paco Underwood
Older people are extremely interested in what your product or service does and why you are better than your competitors. They also have the time to read brochures, newsletters, and now the internet to keep abreast of all the facts to make informed decisions.
Check the physical layout of your office for safety and comfort.
Are the floors even, the door handles easy to open, and aisles wide enough to accommodate walkers or wheelchairs, plus comfortable seating for customers and their families?
Make sure that background music is low enough so that it doesn’t interfere for people with hearing disabilities.
When facing a client, make sure they are not looking directly into sun glare.
In advertising photographs, display individuals as 10 to 15 years younger than they actually are. That is the way we see ourselves, and you will discourage sales if you portray people as frail and sedentary.
Take the time to get to know your older potential clients.
Speak directly to them, answer their questions until you are both satisfied everything is understood. Never, ever talk down to them---their wisdom is priceless.
Patience is a virtue, but the results and referrals coming from each one of your satisfied clients will certainly be worth it!
Sit down and brainstorm with your staff about which of your current products or services can be targeted or modified to better meet the needs of boomers. Or develop new products or services for this market.
Target boomers in your advertising and marketing. Include photos of people in their 50s.
Target boomers in your help-wanted ads. Indicate you value workers of all ages.
Develop more "green" products and adopt more socially responsible business practices.
Be careful about the terms you use. Boomers don't think of themselves as "senior citizens," or even "middle aged."
green garden gates is continuously looking for products and services that will aid our baby boomers in shopping our stores. For example:
Hearing Disabilities
A significant number of our baby boomer customers suffer from some sort of hearing loss and have a hearing aid device. We have installed the latest technology, "Hearing Loops" in locations where close verbal communication is important; checkout areas. customer service areas, as well as video and audio presentations areas. This installation allows for clear sound through the hearing aid devices from of background noises of the garden store.
Motorized Scooters
We have available motorized sit down scooters for those customers unable or unwilling to travel the sometimes long distances in our stores for particular plants and products. Those scooters are placed near the entrance and at a half way point in the site for those customers.
The Boomers in the Garden
Baby boomers are burning out
The number of Americans who list gardening as one of their favorite leisure activities plunged from 15 percent in 1995 to 6 percent.
"When baby boomers fell in love with gardening back in the late 1980's, the perennial border almost elbowed the swimming pool aside. Billowing masses of color and old roses were the rage. People dropped Latin names at cocktail parties and compared notes on their Wellies and hand-forged English garden tools from Smith & Hawken.
Nurseries are reporting a decline in sales, which peaked in 2002 at $39.6 billion. Purveyors of seed packets and garden supplies are quietly saying the same thing: although boomers are still gardening, they are slowing down. Their backs are giving out. They're tired of expensive perennials that keel over in a drought.
They are speaking of the serene effect of green on green. Their manic gardening has given way to calmer (although for some more profound) pleasures, like planting a grove of serviceberry trees and watching them change through the seasons.
Those old-time sturdy shrubs, with their striking flowers and leaves, need very little care.
"We had very elaborate gardens. Perennial beds 600 feet long. But the pleasure-cost ratio was getting out of hand."
"I am very happy not maintaining hundreds of feet of gardens at enormous expense,"
"There's a Hindu notion of going from the village to the forest in the third quarter of your life,"
Money spent on landscaping services by the boomers has risen about 10 percent a year. "So instead of do it yourself, it's do it for me,"
"But I've completely let the backyard go," she said. "It began to feel like a chore."
"The results are so much quicker, with a beginning, middle and conclusion in 30 minutes,". "With gardening, you plant a bulb and it blooms in three months."
They just want a collection of yellow and blue container gardens delivered in time for a dinner party on Saturday night.
He had no idea what to do; he just wanted to find someone to make the back yard look better. More than that, he confided that what he really wanted was to be able to entertain his friends while they all watched football in the back yard.
Luxury garden purchases for high-end barbecues, luxury patio and pool furniture and decorative garden enhancements, i.e. pools, fountains, and sculptures, was the most widely purchased luxury product category, second only to luxury electronics. Forty-five percent of the affluent consumers surveyed purchased luxury garden products, with the average household spending $1,000 on luxury enhancements for their yard.
The real driver for growth is the Boomers passion to reconnect with the natural world.
They feel a need to ground themselves in the real world, a trend which is finding expression in the garden as consumers
They divide their yards into different "outdoor rooms."
They are building elaborate garden getaways to shut out the techno-centric culture and connect with the sounds, smells and sights of nature. They are inviting wildlife into their yards, and not just birds. More adventurous nature lovers are building bat houses and adding turtles, frogs and exotic fish to garden pools.
Demand will grow for custom garden services, landscaping, building pools, fountains, patios, and wall and boundaries. For the masses, more affordable decorative accents, including patio furniture, garden statues, bird baths and houses, and do-it-yourself projects to build walkways, walls, arbors, fences and gates, will be in demand.
The things they buy simply are a means to an end, and that end is an enhanced experience, a special feeling, or deep emotion. Garden businesses need to align themselves with the priorities and passions of the consumer.
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The boomers will hire people in to do their landscaping and lawn and garden maintenance. In 2001
Today and through the next decade the boomer population fits perfectly into the key gardening demographic profile, i.e. aged 48 to 67 years old; more than 75% of households in this age range own their own home; and these are peak household income years with median incomes of $50,000 and above.
Notably, boomers are driving the demand for organic gardening solutions, as they are not willing to spread unknown chemicals all over their lawns. They also are exploring natural alternatives to the traditional lawn, which isn't natural at all. They are planting wildflower meadows, natural grasses and reviving lost prairie grasses in their lawns.
Today, garden marketers need to focus on the needs, desires and passions of the emerging generation of gardening consumers. They will make a critical mistake if they assume that the boomer generation of 45-to-54 year olds is the same as the swing generation 45-to-54 year olds who just passed through this age group
We also predict that boomers will renew a passion for vegetable and herb growing. This links right up to boomers' interest in gourmet cooking and the dining experience. They will start experimentally growing their own veggies and herbs first in pots, and then they will move the kitchen garden out into the yard to expand their growing options
Containers still are popular, replacing high-maintenance flower beds. With less and less time for gardening, I always look forward to a multitude of plants I refer to as "no-brainers." Plants such as Dragon Wings begonia that won't go to pot when I go on vacation carry the interest in our garden through the summer.
Low maintenance also means higher pest resistance, The Knock Out rose and many other plants are good examples of plants that don't require a sprayer-totin' baby-sitter all summer.
Gardeners are looking for "finished" hanging baskets and containers that have an instant effect.
I know very few people who are growing their annuals from seed anymore.
Seventy percent of people do some form of gardening, or "yardening." In my opinion, the beauty of the "sport" is it cuts across every age bracket and can be done on a limited income or not. Happy trowels!
"Baby boomers, on average, aren't going to act old. They're going to wear blue jeans till the day they get carted off,"
Customer count for the boomers is down or flat, with average sale flat.
The rise in container plants for use throughout the garden should have told us more; perhaps it should have alerted us that diverse consumer groups (i.e., the Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y) had already changed gardening.
We should have already read the continued demise of flat sales and the rise of 4- and 6-inch container sales as a demand by these time-starved consumers for immediate gardens.
We should have already paid attention to the fact that every mass merchandiser has managed to create a gardening department to sell everything in the category successfully, with the possible exception of live plants.
While we were paying little attention to the Boomers, they began a steady migration to other pursuits: travel, caring for elderly parents, supporting adult children, moving to smaller living spaces and, ultimately, gardening less.
Get real familiar with demographics. They’ll get to know their customers and potential customers through surveying and focus groups, and they’ll respond with new, branded products.
Find ways to make a smaller retail shopping area more conducive to the time-starved consumer’s needs.
Develop garden planting and maintenance services as in-store products and actively promote those “products.”
Change their packaging from flats to 4- and 6-inch (and bigger) material and offer those larger sizes earlier in the selling season.
Develop a communication strategy to invite the young, non-gardening generation to the store for products, not process.
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When you ask to name garden stores, he or she says Home Depot and Lowe’s.
When you ask to describe traditional garden centers, he or she says, “a place where old ladies shop.”
When you ask where he or she gets outdoor living information, he or she says HGTV, and that’s defined as “before and after.”
When you ask to describe what he or she wants from outdoor space, he or she says “relaxation, entertainment and sanctuary.”
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The Boomer can find all the traditional decorating items that have made Bachman’s famous. And the purple is still in sight, only now trimmed in a fashionable apple-green stripe.
Small stores have proven effective venues for new departments, branded products and in-store workshops that create products instead of educating consumers in processes. Tina Bemis’ customers leave her workshops with finished trough gardens or seasonal wreaths.
All of these emerging and successful garden stores have embraced the Web as a communication tool
A garden store owner uses a set of “before” banners to illustrate an unadorned back yard. She then places collections of products in front of a matching set of back yard banners to show customers how to use the space. The collection includes fountains, furniture and container plants. Everything in the “after” is a high-margin product not a time-consuming process.
An attractive direct mail piece says, “Due to overwhelming demand, we now offer planting service for all the products we sell!”
I think the difference is in definitions. People do not necessarily define yard work or container work as a gardening pastime. And I certainly would not define mowing the lawn as a favorite activity, whereas gardening is.
According to my aching back, "leisure" is not chopping at maple tree roots with the business end of a mattock, or lifting garden edging that has gone crooked for the third time, or fretting over squirrels digging things up just for the hell of it.
While many said that the Internet was a great source of gardening information, the majority felt that despite the convenience of shopping on-line that it was no substitute for visiting a garden center.
They ranked quality of live plants as one of the most important characteristics of a local garden center. Knowledgeable employees and availability of unique items also were important to consumers.
They want the experience of the purchase to satisfy mental, emotional and spiritual needs as well.
