2020 State of the Industry Report: victory gardening

Here's how the rise of victory gardening impacted IGCs in 2020.


Kate Spirgen

Published October 10, 2020

Each September, we present the findings of our exclusive State of the Industry research. We surveyed nearly 300 independent garden center owners, operators and managers in the U.S. and Canada about their IGCs, markets and trends in their areas. The following statistics were gathered via an online survey in August. Editor’s note: Not all percentages will add up to 100% due to rounding and non-responses. Not all answer options are listed here.

Find out how IGCs fared this year in our September print issue or go to our State of the Industry section of our website. Read on for more insights into the current state of the industry and the changes that came with this year.

Here, let’s take a look at the rise in victory gardening for 2020:

With the resurgence of victory gardening in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and high unemployment rates, edibles saw the biggest growth this year, beating out annuals for the first time since 2012, as you can see in the chart to the right. Fountains and statuary are losing momentum, as are apparel, birding and nature products, and water gardening, which fell off the list this year when no survey respondents said those divisions grew in their stores. The fairy gardening craze topped the list of growing divisions in 2016 when nearly half of garden centers reported increasing sales but since then, it has dropped significantly last year and fell off the list this year. One of the biggest changes this year is in the number of IGCs responding that they didn’t see a decrease in sales in any division, which went up by 20 percentage points.

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