It looks like the recession has come home to roost in the greenhouse.
The Associated Press is reporting that the nursery and landscape industry is suffering across the country, primarily because of drastically fewer housing and commercial building starts during the lingering recession. After all, you need to plant after you build.
Those industries are also suffering because their products are perceived as luxury items, because of high transportation fuel costs and because business loans are harder to come by, especially for a business as highly marginalized as a greenhouse.
Not all the news is bad, according to the AP. Sales of edibles - vegetables, fruit trees and berries - did not fall nearly as far.
Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Kenneth K. Lam 2002