Plants
When I lived in the UK I used to spend a lot of time at garden centres and nurseries buying plants and other accoutrements for the garden. It always struck me as a brilliantly simple business, you grow plants that look pretty, put them in pots and sell them. Using cuttings or seeds from plants that you already own means that prices are effectively pure margin with the main costs being space (land) and time.
Some plants require more care and skill to reproduce than others, if you don’t have a green thumb but are willing to do a little research then you will be able to find things that you can grow. I had a friend in the UK with an allotment and 2 largish greenhouses. He would grow Chrysanthemums on the allotment, at the end of the season take cuttings and winter them in the greenhouses before re-planting the allotment. Every year he sold the chrysanthemums at the wholesale market and made a tidy chunk of change on the side.
Even if you live in an apartment in the middle of a large city and do not have the luxury of access to an allotment or communal garden then you can still make money with plants. My grandmother used to grow African violets and always had umpteen varieties around the house, she regularly gave them away to friends and family who would kill them and come back for more. Its not inconceivable that the same plants could have been sold or traded with the same friends, giving them a value as opposed to simply being given away.
Assuming you have grown yourself a nice stock of plants, how are you going to sell them before they all die? We suggest the following: -
Roadside Stall
Fairs
Florists
Garden centres/nurseries
Ebay
Every summer as a kid we would drive to the coast and spend a day at the beach, we would invariably see numerous roadside stalls selling flowers, potatoes and all kinds of other “crops” that were grown in the neighbourhood. Some of these were clearly temporary with no more than a painted sign on a piece of wood or cardboard advertising their wares, whilst others were more established and used a caravan or hut to sell a variety of produce. With no rent or major outlay these businesses fit well with people who have nothing to invest but time.
Most rural areas will have at least one fair in a season, and many schools, scout groups etc will have their own mini-versions. Getting a stand or stall is easy and cheap and you can sell a surprising number of plants, or produce in a day as well as socialising and building your links within the community. If there is not such an event in your area then you might want to think about organising one.
The obvious place to sell flowers is florists. Typically they will get up very early and go to the wholesale flower markets, but if you can make a few phone calls when your flowers are about to bloom you may find that the lure of cheap, fresh flowers is enough to drum up some interest., Many florists also sell a small range of plants.
Garden centres and nurseries usually grow much of their own stock, but if you have a speciality that they do not carry they may well be interested in buying from you. If you plan to use this approach you should visit as many local outlets as possible before you start to see whether they carry what you want to grow. If they don’t then your next step would be to establish that there is a demand. Once you can demonstrate this then it should be easy to persuade them to either buy your plants, or take them on consignment.
Ebay is not the obvious place to sell plants, but you could sell seed stock at the end of the season. There are also couriers who specialise in shipping plants if you are growing something very unusual this may be an option. Be careful of shipping anything across international borders without the correct paperwork though, as this is very much frowned upon. Countries such as Australia are notoriously tough on plant smuggling.
The obvious place is to go to garden centres or nurseries and buy your starter plant(s) there. The downside with this is that if they already carry your plants then you are unlikely to buy from you in future.
Other sources include donor plants that you already have, or cuttings from friends or family. Providing you don’t kill them you could also take cuttings from plants that you find in the wild.
Another option is to order seeds and grow from scratch. With some plants this is notoriously difficult, and you may be able to create a healthy profit if you can work out how to grow one or two of these plants.
You can start to grow plants even if you have no experience. Read a few books and have a go. It won’t cost you much and could become a fascinating hobby even if you don’t make a profit from it.
By its nature this is a seasonal business, but it is one that will not require masses of work on a consistent basis.