Sustainability and digital disruption

Gardening growth is tipped to rise over the next five years with combined Western and Eastern Europe retail value sales climbing by 1.1 per cent to reach EUR 32.7 bn in 2023, up from EUR 30.9 bn in 2018. While accounting for less than 10 per cent of the region's gardening retail sales, Eastern Europe is forecast to grow at a constant value CAGR of 5.5 per cent.
The key growth engine in Eastern Europe will be Russia, as the grow-your-own trend supports robust performance. Indeed, in absolute value terms Russian gardening sales are expected to expand by EUR 637.9 million between 2018 and 2023, making it the fastest growing European market over the forecast period. Rising food prices are driving Russian consumers to grow their own food at home, including fruit and vegetables. Retail value sales for seeds alone grew by 21.8 per cent in Russia in 2018 as consumers sought creative means to afford their daily food essentials.

When looking at the gardening category, horticulture (i.e. indoor plants, seeds and other horticulture) remains the clear winner, with product mix favouring this subcategory over garden care (i.e. fertiliser, soil etc) and gardening equipment (i.e. garden power tools, lawn mowers and watering) between 2018 and 2023. Nonetheless, regional differences persist, with gardening equipment remaining more important in Europe as compared with Asia Pacific.
While the majority of growth in gardening equipment is expected to come from robotic lawn mowers, opportunities exist in watering too, driven primarily by sustainability. According to Euromonitor's 2019 Lifestyles Survey, 46 per cent of consumers in Europe find "eco-friendly" product labels trustworthy. Ethical consumerism is on the rise and Euromonitor's Environmental Sustainability Index can be used by manufacturers and retailers to identify pockets of growth in the gardening space. The Index ranks 97 markets (together responsible for more than 90 per cent of the world's GDP) according to six key pillars, one of which is water; the water pillar combines water equity, availability, security and efficiency indicators. Sweden, Switzerland and France can be considered key priority markets for gardening manufacturers and retailers, given that water rankings in Euromonitor's Environmental Sustainability Index are relatively high, especially when compared with Eastern European markets. On the contrary, markets in Eastern Europe (e.g. Poland, Ukraine etc…