Lifestyle Horticulture

The lifestyle horticulture industry plays a fundamental role in maintaining Queensland's unique lifestyle, and affects many aspects of our everyday life.

It includes businesses and organisations that produce and use non-food horticulture products such as turf, plants, cut flowers and foliage.

Lifestyle Horticulture:

• transforms new housing developments into attractively landscaped community

• helps create popular tourist facilities that attract visitors from interstate and overseas

• supplies the turf for sporting arenas such as the Gabba, Ballymore, Suncorp and ANZ stadiums

• improves the appearance and environmental impacts of major infrastructure projects (such as motorways) through the use of plants

• maintains our parks and gardens and many great golf courses

• produces the flowers and foliage we use to help celebrate special achievements

• uses plants to make homes, offices and shopping complexes more pleasant and healthy

• is an integral part of re-vegetation and environmental remediation projects, as well as a leader in the use of recycled water.

• is an integral part of Queensland's economy.

Research conducted by the Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries (DPI&F) indicates that in 2000-01, the Queensland lifestyle horticulture industry:

• comprised 4332 businesses

• recorded gross sales/expenditure of just over $1 billion

• employed almost 10 000 people (measured on a full-time equivalent basis)

• generated $123 million in exports and interstate trade

• spent $210 million on wages and salaries.

For the latest research about the lifestyle horticulture industry:

http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/cps/rde/dpi/hs.xsl/26_10579_ENA_HTML.htm