The Future of the Garden Industry: One Year On

With Glee just a month away, we’re heading back to Birmingham, as well as the conversations we recorded there last year. At Glee 2025, we asked every guest who joined us one simple question: What’s one change you’d love to see in the garden sector over the next five years?The answers gave us a fascinating snapshot of where the industry thought change was needed. We heard calls for more young people to discover gardening and horticulture, better training for people entering the industry, greater support for independent garden centres and much more ambitious use of digital technology. Our guests also talked about sustainability, peat-free growing media, water conservation, online retail, AI and how garden centres themselves could evolve. There were plenty of big ideas too, from turning garden centres into evening destinations to rethinking the way plants are merchandised. A year on, and with the industry preparing to come together at Glee again, it feels like the perfect time to revisit those conversations. Which ideas are beginning to happen? Which challenges are still with us? And if we asked the same question at Glee this year, would the answers be any different?Featuring voices from across garden retail, horticulture, suppliers, marketing and the wider garden sector.