Nurseries in the vicinity of Lalbagh Botanical Gardens are witnessing slow business and the incoming crowd to the Independence Day flower show hasn’t driven up their sales either.
We visited them on Wednesday, the sixth day of the flower show that has returned after a two-year hiatus because of the pandemic.
Srinivas P V, the proprietor of Balaji Nursery and Garden, located near Ashoka Pillar, says footfalls at the flower show are visibly lower. It could be because of continuous rains or because car parking is not allowed inside the garden premises, he surmised. “If people don’t bring cars, how will they carry back plants?” he asked.
Shreyas Sreenivas was manning an unnamed nursery, first of the many dotting the road opposite the East gate in Siddapura. He also spoke of the parking woes. “An empty ground at the back was used for parking earlier. Now it is usurped for some construction activity.” Shreyas claimed that stalls inside Lalbagh were selling plants 30 per cent cheaper than the running price in the neighbourhood. “Those are wholesale stalls while ours is a retail shop. We have to incur procurement costs, so we can’t give discounts,” he said.
Srinivas explained the cost implication: “Nurseries we source the plants from have increased the prices to make up for the Covid-related losses. Transport cost has gone up because of a spike in fuel prices. Then we have to pay GST for plastic pots.”
The Covid downturn has affected them in ways more than one. Ravi R, owner, of N Ramu & Sons, a nursery down the road, says, “Real estate projects are not back in full swing, so the demand for landscaping plants and grasses is low. Usually, these form the bulk orders.”
Earlier, Siddapura nurseries would sell 10,000 to 15,000 indoor plants to IT offices every month but the rise of remote and hybrid working has put those orders on a backburner, he adds.
A few nurseries in the vicinity, we learned, have shifted to the outskirts of Bengaluru because of high rental and electricity costs.
Would not selling plants at the flower show boost sales temporarily and provide exposure for the long run? Venkatesh, who runs the Shree Mallika Nursery in Siddapura, quipped: “I would need eight to 10 staff to run the nursery inside, to attend to customer inquiries, to keep an eye on children plucking flowers. Until I can be sure that I can make a business of Rs 10 lakh in 10 days, why should I invest time and money?”