Instant gardens a growth industry

Instant gratification has never been the point of gardening. Patient gardeners wait years for plants to pop and call it therapy.

But these days, gardeners are in a hurry like everyone else. You want an instant garden? You've got it, pal, just like those do-it-yourself TV shows that convert bare earth to lush Edens in a matter of minutes.

All sorts of low-cost, no-work gardens are for sale out there, not all promising a miracle. They're part of a $36 billion market for lawn and garden supplies that's been growing steadily for three years and is expected to keep going.

The best-known "instant garden" is Roll 'n Grow, a 10-foot-long, biodegradable carpet embedded with 2,000 flower seeds that sells for $19.95. For the accidental gardener or the newbie too busy tweeting on his iPhone, it's easy: Roll out, add water, and bingo! It's a "floral carpet miracle."

Experienced gardeners know nothing is instant, but European gardeners have used seed-embedded tapes for decades. And Patty Lattanzio, a master gardener from Northeast Philly, makes her own to help children, the elderly, or disabled people plant tiny-seeded crops like lettuce and carrots.

"A lot of other people really can't bend down so well to do the traditional type of planting," she says.

But lately, mainstream garden companies, eager to capitalize on the latest wave of green fever, are selling the super-convenient seed rolls, mats, and tapes, usually on TV, online, or in catalogs.

Smith & Hawken, for example, sells high-end BloemBoxes containing tissue-paper ribbons infused with daisy, poppy, black-eyed Susan, or zinnia seeds. The company plans to add flower and vegetable seed mats next year.

"Edibles are a very hot trend," says Julie Wana, company plant-buyer.

Seed tapes and ribbons cost as little as $5. And the mats can be shaped to fit containers and window boxes. They grow "habitats" to attract hummingbirds, butterflies, and bees. They fill a patch with sunflowers, shade plants, and salsa veggies.

"What turns everybody away from doing a garden is that it doesn't work out for them. They're intimidated. We eliminate a lot of that," says James Johansen, president of Triumph Plant Co. in New City, N.Y., wholesaler of roll-out tissue-paper mats with uniformly spaced seeds for pumpkins, popping corn, catnip, and container plants.

"Besides, everyone's too busy," he says.

In 2006, his first year offering seed mats, an amazed Johansen sold more than 100,000. He expects to triple that this year. "Everybody wants to grow their own flowers and vegetables now," he says.

Last summer, Lynn Roer of White Plains, N.Y., ordered Johansen's marigold and impatiens mats for her two young daughters to plant on either side of a vegetable garden. "We had a forest of marigolds, and the impatiens were like a carpet that lasted all summer," she reports.

Consumers "want it made easier for them," says Laura Quatrochi, a California botanist who invented the $16 BloemBox in 2005 after 20 years of designing seed mats and tapes and wildflower seed mixes, better known as "meadow-in-a-can."

"I think people are afraid of seeds. They're not very comfortable planting them," she says.

Sales figures for the miracle "instant gardens" are hard to come by. So is information from companies that make or sell them, like Roll 'n Grow and Harriet Carter Gifts in North Wales.

Purveyors of the less flamboyant products happily share. Like Johansen, Quatrochi says her business is taking off. It's up 30 percent in the last two years, and, despite the recession, she expects even more growth in 2009.

"Wow! Let's put it this way," Quatrochi says of her BloemBoxes. "We have a team of people . . . working six days a week. We can't make enough."

The situation is less frenzied at Park Seed Co. in South Carolina, which has seen a moderate increase in customer demand for seed mats and tapes. And Gardener's Supply Co. in Vermont is on the sidelines.

It sells plenty of products to make gardening easier, such as self-watering containers, seed balls held together with compost and clay, and upside-down, hanging tomato planters. But spokeswoman Maree Gaetani says the company stopped selling seed tapes after concluding that growing conditions vary too much by region and, after consumer testing, passed on the roll-out "instant gardens."

"We found you actually have to pay a lot of attention to them. You have to keep the mat wet all the time, and a lot of people buying them don't even do that," Gaetani says. "We feel you're better off with transplants."

Still, Johansen and others believe their products have value. "You'd have to go to a local garden center and get an armload of varieties just to get the mix that we give you for pennies," Johansen says, "and kids learn how to grow a successful garden."

This year he added a $12 plantable wrapping-paper set, created by Roer, his satisfied seed-mat customer.

She came up with the "Little Kay Gardens" paper embedded with wildflower seeds after a daughter's birthday party. "We had two Hefty bags full of wrapping paper and ribbons. The amount of waste was just appalling, and we hadn't even opened all the gifts yet," Roer says.

Flower-erupting wrapping paper and blooming mats might sound bizarre to folks who relish the garden's chores - well, most of them - and not just its bounty.

"I think our society is always wanting things yesterday. You can't just roll out a carpet," says Richard A. Colbert, executive director of Tyler Arboretum in Media.

Gardening takes work at the front end - preparing soil, planting, weeding. "But that little bit of additional effort will pay off in very handsome rewards," he says.

And, warns Diana Weiner, volunteer coordinator at Meadowbrook Farm, the public garden in Abington, "instant gardens aren't really instant."

Seeds can take six weeks to germinate and flower. And, yes, if you roll 'n water, Weiner says, "it's going to sprout, but . . . if you haven't done the basic gardening things like prepare the soil, is it going to thrive?"

Soil prep is part of the attraction for Susan Yeager, a gardener from Wyndmoor.

"For me to dig up the turf, to try to move the dirt and lay stones and then try to plant stuff in the stones . . . it's almost like therapy," she says. "In fact, I'm sitting here at work thinking, 'Can I leave early today?' "