Just because Gen Z are digital natives doesn’t mean they’re immune to the analog pleasure of planting bulbs in the backyard. In 2024, 61.5% of Gen Z consumers reported spending more money on gardening than the previous year, more than millennials (48%), Gen X, (48.3%) and boomers (25.8%), according to an Axiom gardening survey. Axiom also found that zoomers were the most likely to say they’d increase their time gardening in 2025, with 69.2% planning to do so, significantly more than millennials (51%), Gen X, (43%) and boomers (27.3%). Now a new marketing platform, Plantista, promises to help garden centers take root with this new generation of gardeners. Plantista’s features include an AI design tool that not only recommends plants that would thrive in users’ unique sunlight and soil conditions but also provides landscape-design options that, after users upload yard photos, shows options how those flowers, shrubs, trees, and vegetables could be arrayed. Users can set many parameters, including requesting plants and designs that require little water (xeriscapes) or attract pollinators like butterflies and bees. Plus—and perhaps more importantly for those who’ve inadvertently killed plants—the platform enables garden center customers to opt in for care-reminder texts. The texts tell them when they need to water their wisteria, fertilize their fig trees, and prune their peonies. While the tools are simple enough to be used by gardeners of any vintage, Ashley Wright, CEO and co-founder of Plantista, said they will hold particular appeal for younger consumers. Most “don’t want to talk to anyone, so this is a way for them to kind of DIY that experience,” Wright told Retail Brew. “They really just want to do it themselves and have the tools for that.” Keep reading here.—AAN | 
