Adapt or Die — the series begins
Green Profit · US|Article|31 December 2025
Adapt or Die — the series begins
Green Profit launches the Adapt or Die series, written by three experts based on three continents and running exclusively in the magazine for the US market. John Stanley has consulted to the industry for fifty years across 35 countries; Sid Raisch has worked with American garden centres for many years from California; and Dries Jansen owns Garden Center Advice with his partner Fred, advising garden centres from Iceland to Dubai. The opening article looks back before looking forward — the first garden centre is believed to have been developed by Edward Stewart in Dorset, England in 1955, followed by Siebenthaler's in Ohio and Lasscock's in Adelaide. It then traces what went wrong from the mid-1980s: box stores taking the garden category, most independents failing to evolve, and a generational shift in what customers buy plants for. The conclusion frames the whole series — the question is not why or whether to change, but how quickly, and each subsequent article takes one subject and goes into the why, where and how.
