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 organizations 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 communities
• 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 Queensland Treasury – Office of Economic & Social Research 2008/09 shows:

• the economic value of the lifestyle horticulture industry in Queensland is in excess of $3.4 billion dollars
• there are over 20,000 people employed in lifestyle horticulture (measured on a full-time equivalent basis).

Further information on the value of industries within Lifestyle Horticulture can be found on the Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation website – Prospects for Queensland Primary Industries 2010 -2011.