(Newswire.net — August 3, 2020) –A crisis brings with a range of opportunities to reflect the present state of life and COVID-19 has been no different. The nature of this pandemic was very peculiar: because the virus transmitted from close contact of humans, governments around the world had to resort to complete lockdown. This rendered billions of people to quarantine at isolated facilities, their homes if they hadn’t contracted the disease or hospitals if they had.
During this anxious time, people were looking for new hobbies so that they could shift their focus away from troubling realities and seek refuge in an engaging and peaceful activity. For this reason, the interest in gardening intensified. There were multiple reasons for this.
Why Did Gardening Appeal People?
The shift towards gardening was prompted primarily because of the lockdown. With their social life coming to a complete standstill, people had ample time to reflect and identify practices that allowed their mind comfort and serenity. Gardening has always been a soothing hobby, The joy of planting seedlings from your own hand after manipulating the most vital elements of the earth such as water and soil is unparalleled. It is also a highly engaging activity: once seeds are planted, they require painstaking protection, nourishment, and supervision to make sure that they survive the harshness of the environment and sprout into young plants.
Another important reason is the fact that gardening is a family-friendly activity. Because there are myriad elements involved in the whole gardening process such as preparing seeds and soil, watering the plants, and supervising their growth, all stakeholders of the family can be incorporated. During the uncertain lockdown period, people increasingly found solace in reconnecting with their families, as this was the only opportunity to satiate the need for social belonging and connection.
Gardening also eased the concerns of food security as the global lockdown disrupted the food supply-chain ecosystem. To increase the production ability of household gardens, people flocked platforms that provided efficiency-enhancing garden solutions such as the Corner Garden Workshop Sheds
Boom In Seed Business
The unprecedented shift towards gardening also led to a boom in sales of seeds. A prominent U.S. seed company by the name of W. Atlee Burpee and Co surpassed its 144-year benchmark of seed revenue in March. When people could not find seeds in retail stores due to the disruption of the supply chain, DIY gardeners sought advice to extract seeds from vegetables such as tomatoes present in grocery stores.
In Russia, a 30% increase in demand for seeds was registered, according to a retailer Ozon. Seed supplies usually go up during the time of a crisis, because there is always a looming threat to food security. People get concerned with both the price of food and the supply of food during emergencies, and the COVID-19 situation highlighted this faultline. Seed companies had to temporarily stop taking online orders because processing orders also got difficult, given the fact that companies could not operate on their full logistical potential.
Gardening Education
With such a huge population taking up the hobby of gardening, the pool of information surrounding gardening practices also increased exponentially. A rise in the number of gardening blogs helped people seek free knowledge regarding best gardening practices so that they could facilitate the growing process and make it worthwhile.