Gardening enthusiasts

Though separated by around 19 000 kilometres from the former mother country, New Zealand is very British – almost like “a carbon copy on the other side of the globe” in the opinion of Peter Dombrowsky, who is more than happy about that. He is a German and sales manager of Jiffy, and is working on making more out of this market. Jiffy products cover everything to do with propagating plants and have been on the market for almost 60 years now. The best-known product is the “Jiffy pot”, a plant pot made of moulded peat and wood fibre. Because the fine roots of seedlings grow through the container wall, they can be planted out with reduced transplant shock together with the pot, which is completely biodegradable. The bestseller is the Jiffy-7 peat pellet of expanding compressed peat in a fine mesh which functions as a plant pot and is also transplanted together with the seedling. The basic products are complemented by a palette of comfort lines such as a greenhouse for the windowsill. With a range like this, moving into a “British” market that has everything that can be expected of such a market, even down to its own celebrity TV gardener (Hamish Dodd in this case), can only be an advantage. Because most people live in their own house, which naturally comes complete with garden, the general affinity to the subject is considerable. “New Zealanders are enthusiastic home gardeners,” says Peter Dombrowsky. Assessing the chances for expanding the gardening business, he notes that “With a population of around 4.2 million, it is probably the biggest garden market of all in terms of per-capita sales.” Apart from the enthusiasm for gardening, this may well be due to high prices compared to Europe and the USA, which are blamed on the high import duties. Goods produced within the country, such as seedlings, are also very expensive. If New Zealand leans relatively clearly towards European models, in Australia there is a perceptible tendency in the direction of the United States. No matter, in the country of kangaroos and duck-billed platypuses, too, interest in the subject of plants and gardening goes back a very long way. The Botanic Gardens in Sydney will be celebrating their 200th anniversary in 2016! The garden market is strongly shaped by the big names in the DIY market, the Bunnings chain and the Mitre 10 cooperative, which has also worked out a garden centre concept for its independent hardware dealers. And there are lots of UK-style garden centres in Australia as…