Karen Wilkinson On Helping Miracle-Gro Find Its Green Fingers Again

Karen Wilkinson knows a thing or two about making everyday categories feel a bit less humdrum and a bit more emotional.

Now UK and Ireland marketing director at Evergreen Garden Care, where she is focused on driving growth across brands including Miracle-Gro, Tomorite and Roundup, Wilkinson arrived in garden care after a decade at AkzoNobel, working on brands including Dulux and Cuprinol.

Before that came 15 years at Allied Irish Bank, where she held a range of marketing roles across retail and B2B, eventually becoming head of marketing for AIB UK - experience she says gave her fluency in the “language of business” as well as the language of brand-building.

That mix of commercial rigour and creative appetite is now being put to work in a category with a surprisingly knotty problem: Britain loves gardens, but not everyone feels like a gardener.

Miracle-Gro’s new fully integrated campaign, created with VCCP, is designed to tackle that confidence gap head-on. Enter Moe and Gaz Glover — a father-and-son pair of gardening gloves, voiced by Steve Furst and Blake Harrison, and built around the line “Everyone needs a little help in the garden”.

The ambition is bigger than a spring sales push. Wilkinson says the work is part of Evergreen’s 2030 category vision to unlock £150m of retail garden-care growth, while making the category more welcoming to new and existing gardeners. The campaign has already earned a System1 “Exceptional” 5.3 rating and, according to Wilkinson, early signs include double-digit uplifts in brand distribution points and market-share growth for products featured in the TV work.

Wilkinson was named in Campaign UK’s 40 Over 40 while at AkzoNobel and was shortlisted for The Marketing Society’s Inspirational Marketing Leader of the Year in 2023. More recently, at Evergreen, she has talked about the need for client-agency relationships to move beyond a service-provider model into true partnership - built on listening, context, challenge and a shared understanding of business performance.

Here, she talks about choosing VCCP, creating 'The Glovers', the peculiar power of bank holidays and British weather, and why marketers must be brilliant at selling their plans internally as well as externally.

This is the first campaign for you from VCCP. What made you pick them as agency partners?

VCCP showed up on day one of the pitch process in 2025 as a hugely passionate and experienced team who truly understand how to activate big ambitions as a challenger brand. The team, without exception, brought infectious energy and enthusiasm not only for the garden care category, but for the potential to unlock short and long term brand growth by investing in an integrated creative platform that could perform at every shopper journey touchpoint. Through the selection process, they impressed us a strong strategic approach backed by insight and evidence, alongside a creative route that didn’t only excite the Marketers in the room, but also got the Executive team buzzing! Together we secured incremental investment to build a multi-market campaign, launched first in UK in 2026, and hitting European markets from 2027. The VCCP saying that ‘It only works if it all works’ really rings true when building a strong client-agency partnership.

And why did you choose this creative route for the campaign?

The Miracle-Gro Glovers were the winning route multiple reasons

Distinctive & Memorable: The Glovers are two lovable and memorable brand characters, with a backstory that shows how they lend their ‘helping hands’ to gardeners in need across the country, with a sprinkling of joy and wisdom. Dad ‘Moe’ and son ‘ Gaz’ are a fun and familiar father and son duo, based loosely on well known and lovable family duo’s like Steptoe and Son, Jack, and Michael Whitehall, Bradly, and Barney Walsh. This meant that production, direction and casting was key to ensuring we established distinctive voices and characters from the outset. This led us to working with the brilliantly talented comedy veteran Steve Furst, and Blake Harrison, who is best known for playing the gullible but lovable Neil from The Inbetweeners.

Flexibilty: We have two audiences – the all weather, experienced gardener and the less experienced fair-weather, convenience seeking gardener with different levels of confidence and knowledge in gardening. Communicating effectively to both audiences with single minded messages without alienating either is no mean feat. The Glovers duo gave us the flexibility for the characters to have different points of view, speak with different levels of authority, and flex with different personalities to appeal and deliver multiple messages in way which connected with different generations. From a production perspective, we loved the ability to leverage CGI and AI to creatively disrupt shoppers on the path to purchase and achieve brand standout. Ultimately the Glovers have the ability to deliver many educational messages in entertaining way in any asset format – physical or virtual.

Consumer Truths: there is deep truth in the consumer insight that people don’t necessarily see themselves as knowledgeable gardeners, regardless how long they have been gardening and growing. They are always looking to share or get tips, advice and inspiration from others, and often the first time gardening is with a child, parent or grandparent. This is where the distinctive campaign jingle ‘Everyone needs a little help in the garden’ came from, with their satisfaction and pride peaking when the garden is looking ‘Blooming Lovely’. Also gardening is something which inherently requires you to use your hands, connect with nature and get your hands dirty – with Gloves being a great representation of this.

Emotion and Joy: Every time we shared their sing – song, fun and memorable catch phrases and rhyming script, the room lit up with smiles and laughs. This is when we knew we had hit the nail on the head with achieving a positive emotional response to functional messages.

Even though the creative testing gave us confidence that the campaign route was strong and impactful, the recent recognition from System 1 as Ad of the Week with and ‘Exceptional’ 5.3 Rating was further acknowledgement that The Glovers are a brilliantly clever, fun brand device. I am also thrilled to see double digit uplifts in brand distribution points this season, with early reads of market share already showing growth, with the compost and plant food products featured in the TVC outperforming the market.

Evergreen advertises around key bank holiday events – how important are they to you and how do you keep the momentum up the rest of the year?

There is no doubt that Garden care in the UK is hugely seasonal, with half of total category sales happening from March to May. Therefore we invest heavily in through the line activations at this time of year, with ‘off season’ focus being more focused on below the line communications and point of purchase activations. An interesting dynamic in our category is the power of the weather! This plays a huge part in determining both demand and audience at any given time.

Approximately 40 per cent of British gardeners being ‘All weather gardeners’, who see gardening as a hobby and will work on preparing their lawns for winter in Autumntime and improving soil health in the dark winter months. These shoppers pretty much buy the same product year in year out, regardless of weather and bank holidays – think of these as hobby gardeners. But the remaining 60 per cent of consumers are more ‘fair weather’ gardeners, who enjoy their garden when the sun comes out but have busy lives with jobs, families and other hobbies, and are generally looking for quick, easy to use garden products. Its these fair weather gardeners shopping that shop and garden more at bank holidays and in Springtime and this is where Miracle Gro really wins with an easy to use range of products that deliver great results to make gardens beautiful to enjoy all Summer long.

A huge proportion of annual garden care category sales goes through garden centres (44 per cent), with the remaining 55 per cent of sales in Grocers, DIY and Value/Discounter retailers. This is where The Glovers can show up in lots of different retail environments, talking about different products depending on the season – whether its Compost in February, Lawns in March or Plant food in May! With increasing flexibility in retail media formats, we see great opportunities for new creative executions with retailers.

How did you become a marketer? Was it always something you wanted to do?

Although I wasn’t very clear what marketing really entailed, I knew I wanted to pursue a career that could blend business, language and creativity. This lead me to study International Marketing with languages at University many years ago!. In all honesty, I'm not my marketing degree from the 90s would still hold much relevance for what a career in marketing looks like today, but it was a great bridge into the fun, creative world of business and brand building. The speed at which the marketing function evolves is incredible and makes every day a school day even now!

Tell us about your career to date?

I’ve just completed my second “season” at Evergreen Garden Care, where I’m focused on driving growth across a portfolio of brands including Miracle-Gro, Tomorite, and Roundup. Prior to this, I spent 10 years at AkzoNobel as marketing director, leading well-known brands such as Dulux, and Cuprinol — an experience that allowed me to immerse myself in the more creative, design-led world of DIY and home improvement with alongside hugely talented marketing team overflowing with passion for the power of colour in enriching lives.

Earlier in my career, I participated Allied Irish Bank, back then Ireland’s largest bank, graduate programme. I ended up working here for 15 years, holding huge range of marketing roles spanning retail and B2B marketing — from corporate sponsorship and events, to research and insights, to digital marketing. Ultimately I became head of marketing for AIB UK, with responsibility for the total marketing and product management function. The experience of working in financial services and commercial banking, especially during the financial crisis of 2008, gave me strong fluency in understanding the ‘language of business’ in the boardroom, which has stood me in good stead through my career.

What excites you most about being a marketer?

I love the fast paced, future-orientated nature of marketing. One minute you are immersed in peak sales season, seeing activations and campaigns come to life, and the next you are building long term strategic plans not just for brands, but for the total business. I love being in a cross functional leadership team where together you bring diversity of thinking to running the business of today and growing for tomorrow.

Is there a particular campaign from your career that you are particularly proud of?

Although I am hugely proud of some brilliant award winning campaigns and partnerships from my time at Dulux Akzonobel, I have to say I am most proud of this current campaign for Miracle Gro. The Glovers were born from shared ambition with VCCP, which at time of pitch were without the full budget I knew I needed to unlock their potential. But through shared determination, creativity and team work, we executed with brilliance and the commercial return has been visible from the first month of the campaign. Its not everyday a campaign can drive a tangible level of growth in the first season. That makes me smile and feel hugely proud of the faith that was put me to deliver.

What frustrates you most about being a marketer?

The hardest part of being a marketing leader is constantly balancing multiple stakeholder needs, whilst recognising commercial constraints and economic challenges. We are never short of brilliant ideas – but securing investment, demonstrating short and long term paybacks can be challenging at times. But that’s where the ability to communicate, influence and engage colleagues is vital. We are not just marketing our brands to consumers, but also marketing our brand plans to stakeholders and demonstrating the case for investment.

What are you working on next?

We have set out a 2030 category vision for garden care growth which is hugely exciting and clearly sets out how together with retailers we can unlock +£150m growth in retail garden care. With our brands, retail partners and agency partners we are working on the multiple ways to engage new and existing gardening audiences, with changing needs and lifestyles so that our brands continue to grow and stay relevant in a way which is good for society, good for business and good for the planet. Watch this space for how The Glovers will keep making gardens across the country ‘Bloomin’ Lovely’ with Miracle Gro!