Labor shortages persist as a significant challenge for growers and retailers across North America. Recruiting staff has become difficult, and as a result, wages have increased. Furthermore, upon recruitment, training staff to water is often a challenging task. Irrigation takes knowledge, practice, and experience. Many production growers have turned to automation to reduce labor and improve the quality of their plants. However, retail garden centers are behind the automation curve, still hand watering regularly. Upgrading retail irrigation systems that are tailored to merchandising can significantly benefit garden centers, minimizing labor requirements and enhancing plant health.
Unlike wholesale greenhouses, retail garden centers have customers that regularly interact with their plants. They often have smaller benching for showcasing plant material and prioritizing customer safety and comfort. Consequently, this must be considered when planning watering.
The nature of a retail garden center is to sell plants to gardeners. These customers are regularly visiting the garden center during normal work hours, making irrigation difficult. Additionally, while wholesale growers may plan their irrigation systems and benching around efficiency for space utilization, labor, and irrigation, garden centers must consider merchandising and customer/plant interaction.
For instance, a wholesale grower may have hanging baskets 7-8′ in the air, above benching with very long runs and wide benches that reduce the aisle space. This setup would make shopping difficult. Hard-to-reach plants do not help sales. Customers want an easy shopping experience where plant material is presented well and within easy reach.
As a result, garden centers need to devise irrigation strategies that improve watering efficiency without compromising the attractiveness and accessibility of the store.
Automated retail irrigation systems offer a solution by reducing watering time and providing the ability to schedule irrigation cycles during off-hours, when customers are not present. Furthermore, it solves this issue without needing employees to work overtime.
By utilizing innovative designs, automated irrigation can be set up without disrupting sales. For instance, lines can be run that flow from the front of the garden center with shut offs at the rear of the store, allowing for merchandise to be fronted as product sells. Using two supply lines for double-hung baskets so water can be shut off to the top line as the plants are sold. Valves can be installed along the PE tubing to allow sections to be shut off when they are not being used. These types of solutions can aid garden centers in plant care while still maintaining an appealing shopping environment.
Capillary mats used for sub-irrigation are particularly effective in retail settings. Whether watered automatically or manually, these provide water to any plant on the mat when it is wetted. Cap mats mitigate issues such as customers removing drippers and reduce plant health issues caused by overhead watering of finished plants.
Capillary mats use a woven weed-barrier layer, a water holding layer, and often, a plastic layer to hold in the moisture. They typically hold a specific volume of water per square foot before puddling. Knowing this volume, and the volume of water needed to water the plants on the bench, garden center managers can schedule irrigation systems to water via drip emitters so that no labor is required. If a customer picks up a plant and decides against it, once set down on the mat, the plant still gets watered.
Controlling your irrigation system is a final, important consideration. Automating may not mean that a timer turns everything on. Automation can mean using a controller that can be manually activated as determined by the growing staff.
Designing retail irrigation systems with the consumer and the garden center in mind is very important when automating at retail. The Dramm Team has decades of experience working with garden centers to help water their plants. Our team can help by asking the right questions about your facility and your business to guide you to the right systems for your garden center.
Let us help design an irrigation system to reduce labor and improve plant health.
