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COVID consumer demand leading to plant shortages

Expect low inventories, shipping delays, and a lack of labor to drive up perennial and nursery plant prices this year.

Amy Upton with the Michigan Nursery Landscape Association tells Brownfield, “One of the big factors that is affecting any type of plants is with shipping—I’m just hearing horror stories.”

Michigan, the largest nursery stock producer in the Midwest, sources many of their seedling starts from Oregon and the Pacific Northwest, but Upton says shipping costs are double or triple that of even last year.

“That is definitely going to have an impact on pricing,” she shares.

She says all sectors of their group reported record years in 2020, “Better than ever—in fact, it’s led now to severe plant shortages.”

Upton says it takes trees five to seven years to get to retail size and inventories have been low following the last recession.  Demand last year has depleted stocks even more and expanded into perennials and other plants.

“On one end we have a plant shortage, and everybody wants more but we don’t have the people to do it and we don’t have the space,” she says.

The Michigan Nursery Landscape Association represents the largest segment of the state’s specialty crop sector with Michigan’s nursery industry the fourth largest in the nation.