Hi Welcome to April and Happy Easter!
With offices filling and construction again booming, particularly in capital cities, demand for Interior Plantscaping services is strong all around Australia and hopefully in New Zealand as well. Fears of reduced office space, economic downturn and more workplace flexibility with work from home, does not seem to have dampened the appetite for plants in the spaces we work and live in. Whilst CBD office towers are expected to have slightly higher vacancy rates, the emerging trend is for more decentralized, low rise office developments outside of the CBD.
The increased demand for ornamental and food plants and flowers during 2020, coupled with internet sales and pop-up shops has led to some shortages of specific indoor plant stock, given growers cannot easily increase production volumes at a moment’s notice. As one supplier said to me, ‘it’s not that I can’t get you stock, it’s just a matter of what I can give you’. This becomes a problem with quoting on very specific design briefs with the usual short timeframes. Now more than ever forward planning with our suppliers as well as prospective clients and their design teams has become critical to successful outcomes. We all need to continue to educate the professions we rely on, Architects, Landscape Architects, Designers and Builders as well as Clients, about crop lead-times and import shipment times to be able to fulfill specific briefs. ’Flexibility’ has become my 2021 buzz word.
Talking about forward planning, there are numerous resources to help with plant and style trends that we need to consider. Some of these resources include;
- 2021 Interior Design Trends, free at newprocontainers.com
- 2021 Plant Trend Report from Hort Innovation, Nursery Fund, see Plant Life Balance at myplantlifebalance.com.au
- I-Plants Magazine at iplantsmagazine.com highly recommended as an insight into what is happening in Interior Plantscaping in the US
I am sure I don’t need to remind members that our industry is not just about maintaining plants, but about fashion and trends and most importantly about people and how they relate to the built environment. Biophilic Design featuring plants for their health and wellbeing benefits remains one of our key competitive advantages as the Green Industry, something we need to continue to shout about.
So let’s all plan to make 2021 a success!
IPA 2021 President
Cameron Iddles
(M) 0418543312
info@interiorplantscape.asn.au