Landscape Trends

How nice to see the sun and mild temperatures!! A new landscape season is happening. Contractors seem to be optimistic and why would they not? The Green Industry is enjoying a continuing growth spurt. Lets take a look at the landscape trends for 2015.

Landscape Trends

Every year the American Society of Landscape Architects surveys its membership to learn the top trends in landscape design. These are landscape architects, so some assumptions are due. First, the projects they see are higher end residential and commercial. Next, they are into “sustainable” anything, thus the high ranking of such landscape criteria.

But that desired by commercial and high end residential clients tends to be common with everyone eventually. So keeping an eye on the landscape trends can be helpful for a landscaper’s future planning.

The 2015 survey came back with two top trends, which can be summarized as “sustainable” and “low-maintenance”. ASLA CEO, Nancy Somerville, states, “Consumers care about designed landscapes that are attractive, easy to take of, and eco-friendly”.

Top Ten by Ranking

1. Native Plants (85%)
2. Native/adapted Drought-tolerant Plants (83%)
3. Food/vegetable Gardens (79%)
4. Fire pits/fireplaces (78%)
5. Low-maintenance landscapes (78%)
6. Permeable paving (77%)
7. Micro/water Efficient Irrigation (74%)
8. Rain Gardens (74%)
9. Lighting (72%)
10. Rainwater/graywater Harvesting (71%)

Time and Money Factors

The easy to care for thing is obvious. Time is an issue nowadays, homeowners and commercial property managers want nice landscapes without a huge time (or money) investment for maintenance. The high response for native or drought tolerant plants and low-maintenance landscapes shows that.

Hardscape is still in big demand. Anybody doing pavers, pools, fire-pits, fireplaces, etc should be finding plenty of work.

Lighting is still on the list, although it dropped down a few spots from a couple years ago. Lighting is natural part of hardscapes so I think it may be losing its identity behind other services.

Water harvesting, rain gardens, permeable pavers is a natural offshoot of all the talk fostered by governmental bodies for the past 8 years. Many talk about it, but when they see the price such features are often downsized or dropped. Still, consumers are aware of and desirous for these features.

I was thrilled to see anything to do with irrigation on the list! When people say “drip” irrigation, what they really mean is water conserving. Unfortunately, many consumers have been led to mistakenly think anything drip is good and any not drip is bad. Far from the truth, good irrigation uses a variety of products. What matters is the trifecta of design, installation, and operation.

Smart controllers, pressure regulated sprinklers, and micro (the industry’s preferred term for drip) are the key products to look at. High Distribution Uniformity (DU) design and good installation are the designer’s/installers responsibility. Smart control handles the operation.

Consumers are now aware of and accepting of smart control. It’s an easy sale and should be adopted by all professionals in the business as the de facto control system.

Societal Trends

Over the past decade, more young people want to live downtown than in the suburbs. A resurgence of downtown areas has followed. The trend is continuing.

In the last 10 years, the population of the “cool” cities has grown 3-4% faster than the national growth rate. Not every city is considered a cool place to live, so it depends on how much life style amenities a city has to attractive thriving pockets of youngsters.

Generally speaking, 20 year olds are not getting married or having kids and want to live downtown. 30 year olds are getting married and starting families. Once they have kids the majority will want a house in the suburbs, but not all.

Another emerging trend is older people leaving their suburban houses for condos downtown. Easier to care for, smaller, close to entertainment, shopping, and healthcare. Effects of this migration will have to be watched as it develops.

Bottom line is the suburbs are not seeing the normal transitions from older to younger people they once did and demand for more affordable downtown apartments and condos remains strong.

Economic News

Good Stuff

• Employment is steadily increasing.
• Construction spending is still growing.
• Residential construction is now the next growth area.
• Commodity prices have been and will likely remain steady. Watch out though, increased construction activity may overtake materials production levels causing price increases later in the year.
• Employers with fewer than 50 employees got a reprieve on the penalties for health plans that don’t meet the Obamacare directives.
• Construction workers who left the industry or sitting idle for the past 6 years are returning to the workforce.
• Household wealth, stagnant for several years is now up 1.9%.
• Gas prices have dropped.

Not So Good Stuff

• Wages are stagnant. Part time jobs are growing in number.
• Consumer spending has been slowing.
• Retail sales have been down for 3 months.
• Wholesale inventories are overstocked because of slower materials purchases.
• Factory output is being slowed.
• Stock market growth may be hampered by growth of dollar value.
• Feds are signaling they want to raise interest rates.

A mixed bag of facts that makes it hard to discern where the economy is really going. Consensus opinion is that we’ll see another year of slow growth with no major economic issues. Should be more good news for the Green Industry than bad.

Labor Trend

Yup, like always finding some good people is still a problem. Landscape trades are competing with Welfare and other higher paying trades. But even the better paying trades say they are having difficulty finding good people.

Good people are defined as those with a valid driver’s license, a clean driving record, can pass a drug test, show up every day, and want to work. What is happening?……..