Everybody Else Is Planting One: How Social Proof Shapes the Garden
There is a hydrangea on a street somewhere that has probably sold more hydrangeas than most advertisements ever will.
Nobody planned it.
There was no media buy.
No promotion.
No QR code.
Someone simply planted it beside the front porch.
It grew.
Then it flowered.
The neighbour saw it.
Then another neighbour saw it.
Someone walking the dog stopped to look.
Eventually somebody asked:
“What is that?”
And somewhere nearby, another hydrangea was purchased.
This is one of the stranger characteristics of horticultural retail.
Most products disappear into private life after they are bought.
The toaster goes into the kitchen.
The television goes into the living room.
The sweater goes into the closet.
Plants often do the opposite.
They go outside.
Where everybody can see them.
That means the customer who buys a plant may unknowingly become part of the marketing system for the next customer.
Behavioural science has a name for part of what is happening.
Social proof.
And horticulture may be one of the industries where it operates most visibly.
We Watch Other People When We Are Not Sure
Imagine arriving in an unfamiliar city and discovering two restaurants beside one another.
One is nearly empty.
The other is busy.
You know nothing about either.
Where do you go?
Most of us feel at least a small pull toward the busy one.
Why?
The people inside possess information we do not.
Perhaps the food is better.
Perhaps the service is better.
Maybe everybody else simply knows something.
That is social proof.
When people are uncertain about what to do, the behaviour of others can become evidence.
Not perfect evidence.
Not always rational evidence.
But evidence nonetheless.
Robert Cialdini and other social psychologists have spent decades demonstrating how powerfully social norms can influence behaviour.
And one of the most interesting lessons from that research is this:
The people whose behaviour matters most are not always celebrities or experts.
Sometimes they are simply people who appear relevant to us.
People here.
People like me.
People in this situation.
That distinction matters enormously in gardening.
The Hotel Room Experiment
Noah Goldstein, Robert Cialdini and Vladas Griskevicius conducted one of the best-known social-norm experiments in hotel rooms.
Hotels wanted guests to reuse towels.
The conventional message was essentially:
Help protect the environment.
Perfectly reasonable.
The researchers tried something different.
They told guests that most other guests reused their towels.
That worked better.
Then they made the comparison even more specific.
Guests were told that most people who had stayed in that particular room had reused their towels.
That message was especially effective.
Why would complete strangers who previously occupied Room 314 matter?
They were not friends.
Not experts.
Not environmental scientists.
But psychologically, they occupied the same situation.
The researchers described these highly local comparisons as provincial norms.
The closer the comparison matched the consumer’s immediate circumstances, the more influential it could become.
Now consider gardening.
“Popular rose.”
Interesting.
“Popular rose in Canada.”
More relevant.
“One of our best-selling roses in Alberta.”
More relevant still.
“One of the roses gardeners in Calgary return for year after year.”
Now the social information is getting remarkably close to home.
Local Popularity Is Different From Popularity
This distinction deserves attention.
Imagine a garden centre in Winnipeg advertising:
America’s Best-Selling Hydrangea
Perhaps impressive.
Now imagine:
A Favourite With Manitoba Gardeners
The second statement answers a different question.
Not merely:
Do people like this?
But:
Do people growing plants where I live like this?
In horticulture, geography matters.
Climate matters.
Winter matters.
Local performance matters.
A distant best seller may communicate popularity.
A local best seller can imply suitability.
The social proof and the horticultural proof begin reinforcing one another.
That makes local sales data potentially much more valuable than we sometimes realize.
We tend to view sales history as internal business information.
Perhaps parts of it should become marketing.
“Our Most Popular” Is Information
Retailers sometimes hesitate to use phrases such as:
Best Seller.
Customer Favourite.
Most Popular.
Top Pick.
They can sound promotional.
But when they are truthful, these phrases provide something consumers genuinely use.
Information about other consumers.
Suppose a shopper is looking at eight roses they have never grown.
One carries a small designation:
Customer Favourite
That statement does not explain the genetics.
It does not describe fragrance.
It does not guarantee success.
It simply says:
A lot of people have chosen this.
That can matter.
Especially when the shopper lacks personal experience with the category.
Popularity becomes a shortcut.
But Social Proof Needs to Be True
There is an important ethical line here.
A retailer should never manufacture popularity.
Do not put:
Best Seller
on something because you want it to become one.
Do not claim:
Customer Favourite
because somebody in marketing likes the phrase.
Social proof works partly because the shopper believes they are learning something real about other people’s behaviour.
False social proof is not clever merchandising.
It is deception.
The opportunity is much better when the data are genuine.
If this really is your number-one-selling rose in Alberta, say so.
If 2,000 Canadian gardeners bought the program last year, perhaps say that.
If a variety has remained a strong seller for ten seasons, that is information.
Real behaviour creates real evidence.
Gardens Are Public Consumption
There is another reason horticulture is unusual.
Researchers studying residential landscapes have described yards as social places and even as social symbols.
Think about that.
The front garden communicates something.
Neat.
Wild.
Traditional.
Modern.
Colourful.
Minimal.
Formal.
Naturalistic.
The plants themselves become part of the message a household presents to the neighbourhood.
This means gardening decisions do not occur entirely in private.
The garden is simultaneously:
personal space
ecological space
recreational space
and, to some extent, public display.
That last role changes consumer behaviour.
Because visible consumption creates opportunities for imitation.
Front Yards and Back Yards Are Psychologically Different
Research into residential landscaping has uncovered something fascinating.
Social norms can exert stronger influence over the more publicly visible parts of a property.
That makes intuitive sense.
The backyard is relatively private.
The front yard is on stage.
Neighbours see it.
Visitors see it.
People walking past see it.
The delivery driver sees it.
Everyone sees it.
The front yard therefore carries greater social consequence.
Plant something highly unconventional in the backyard and almost nobody knows.
Plant it beside the front sidewalk and you have made a public statement.
This may help explain why neighbourhood landscapes often develop recognizable patterns.
Similar lawns.
Similar hedges.
Similar trees.
Similar foundation plantings.
People are not necessarily consciously copying one another.
They are learning from the environment around them.
The Neighbourhood Is a Showroom
This gives horticultural retailers a useful way to think about residential landscapes.
Perhaps the garden centre is not the only showroom.
The neighbourhood is another one.
Drive through a community in June and notice what is happening.
A spectacular rhododendron.
Several houses later, another.
Flowering dogwoods.
Hydrangeas.
Ornamental grasses.
Certain roses.
Japanese maples.
Lavender.
Plants begin appearing in clusters.
Some of that reflects climate.
Some reflects housing age.
Some reflects what landscapers commonly installed.
Some reflects what local retailers stocked.
But some almost certainly reflects human imitation.
People see what works.
Then they reproduce it.
The neighbour has conducted a horticultural experiment on our behalf.
Their success becomes evidence.
A Mature Plant Is a Testimonial
Companies spend enormous amounts of money collecting testimonials.
Plants produce them naturally.
A twenty-year-old clematis flowering magnificently on someone’s house is a testimonial.
A blueberry loaded with fruit is a testimonial.
A hedge surviving a Prairie winter is a testimonial.
A perennial returning every spring is a testimonial.
Nobody has to say:
“This plant performs well here.”
The plant is saying it.
This creates an interesting opportunity for horticultural marketing.
We usually photograph plants in beautiful gardens.
But perhaps we should sometimes tell people where those gardens are.
Not the exact private address, obviously.
But:
Established garden in Calgary, Alberta.
Growing in Winnipeg.
Three-year-old specimen in southern Ontario.
Container-grown on a Vancouver balcony.
Now the photograph carries another layer of evidence.
This does not merely look beautiful.
Someone grew it successfully somewhere relevant to me.
“People Like You” Is Powerful
The most useful social proof frequently comes from people the customer identifies with.
This is why a professional landscape architect’s garden and a homeowner’s garden can perform different marketing jobs.
The professional garden says:
Look what is possible with expertise.
The homeowner garden says:
Look what someone like you did.
Both are valuable.
But the second can make adoption feel more normal.
Consider:
Grown by Canadian gardeners
Or:
See how homeowners across the Prairies are using this rose
Customer-generated photographs could become remarkably useful horticultural assets.
Not because the photography is perfect.
Perhaps precisely because it is not.
A real fence.
A normal deck.
A suburban house.
A garden with a hose lying somewhere it should not be.
The imperfections can communicate authenticity.
This happened in an ordinary garden.
Gardening Trends Can Spread Socially
Think about how certain horticultural ideas suddenly seem to appear everywhere.
Pollinator gardens.
Raised vegetable beds.
Ornamental grasses.
Native plants.
Black mulch.
Hydrangeas.
Backyard fruit.
Container vegetables.
Meadow-style planting.
Some of these trends are pushed by media.
Some by breeders.
Some by environmental movements.
Some by designers.
But adoption also becomes social.
One homeowner tries something.
Other people see it.
The unfamiliar becomes familiar.
Then something interesting happens.
The innovation stops looking unusual.
It begins looking normal.
Social proof does not simply persuade people that something is desirable.
It can redefine what belongs.
The First Native Garden Has a Harder Job Than the Tenth
This becomes particularly clear with newer landscape practices.
Suppose someone replaces a conventional front lawn with a native planting.
In a neighbourhood of perfectly maintained turf, that garden stands out dramatically.
Some neighbours may admire it.
Others may interpret it as untidy.
But now suppose several properties adopt well-designed native landscapes.
The visual norm begins changing.
What once looked unconventional starts to look intentional.
Research into native-plant adoption has found that social norms and the public visibility of residential landscapes can influence landscaping decisions.
This is important for retailers trying to introduce unfamiliar plants or garden styles.
The barrier may not simply be:
Does the consumer understand this plant?
It may be:
Does this look like something people around here do?
That is a different marketing challenge.
Adoption Creates Adoption
A 2024 study examining willingness to add pollinator-beneficial plants to residential yards found something particularly revealing.
People whose yards did not already contain these kinds of plants were less willing to add them.
The researchers also found relationships between planting willingness, preferences for yard appearance and social norms.
That suggests adoption can become self-reinforcing.
Once a practice becomes established, the next step becomes easier.
Someone already growing pollinator-friendly plants may be more receptive to another one.
Someone surrounded by neighbours using those plants may increasingly view the landscape style as normal.
The first adoption changes the environment in which future decisions occur.
That should interest marketers.
Because a sale can create conditions for another sale.
Horticulture Has a Geographic Network Effect
Technology companies talk about network effects.
A network becomes more useful as more people join.
Horticulture has something different, but related.
Call it a geographic visibility effect.
The more successfully a plant appears in an area, the more opportunities local consumers have to encounter it.
Each established specimen creates exposure.
Exposure creates familiarity.
Familiarity can create questions.
Questions can create demand.
One spectacular flowering shrub may influence several households.
Several households create neighbourhood visibility.
Neighbourhood visibility can create local fashion.
The plant is reproducing commercially even when it is not reproducing botanically.
That is a fascinating form of retail diffusion.
The Sale Does Not End at Checkout
This suggests growers and retailers should think beyond the transaction.
The customer buys the plant today.
Where will that plant be visible next year?
Will neighbours see it?
Will visitors ask about it?
Will the customer photograph it?
Will it appear on social media?
Will someone take cut flowers to work?
Will the customer give fruit to neighbours?
The product continues creating impressions after purchase.
Some consumer goods do this.
Cars.
Fashion.
Homes.
Plants may do it particularly well because successful horticulture becomes more conspicuous over time.
The product can actually become more impressive after it leaves retail.
That is unusual.
The Garden Is Word of Mouth With Roots
Traditional word of mouth requires someone to talk.
Gardens do not.
The neighbour sees the flowering rose.
That is enough.
Perhaps they ask.
Perhaps they don’t.
But exposure has occurred.
This might be called visual word of mouth.
A product recommendation delivered through observation rather than conversation.
Of course, conversation often follows.
“What is that?”
“Where did you get it?”
“Does it come back?”
“How big does it get?”
“Does it survive winter?”
Now the gardener becomes salesperson.
And customer recommendations possess something advertisements struggle to manufacture:
credibility.
Gardeners Talk
Research into wildlife-friendly gardening has found considerable interpersonal sharing.
One study examining household participation in activities supporting native species reported that 85 percent of participants talked with other people about what they were doing, potentially helping influence social norms.
That is remarkable.
It means horticultural activity can travel through social networks both visually and verbally.
Someone plants.
Someone notices.
Someone asks.
Someone explains.
Someone else tries.
The garden becomes both product and media.
Give Customers Something Easy to Repeat
This has implications for the language we use.
Imagine a neighbour asks:
“What rose is that?”
The gardener replies:
“I don’t remember. Something something Floribunda 2025 breeder code.”
Conversation over.
Now imagine:
“It’s that super-hardy Canadian rose I told you about.”
That story travels.
Or:
“It’s the one that flowers all summer.”
Or:
“That’s the patio blueberry.”
Simple propositions move through social networks more easily than technical descriptions.
This is another reason memorable product positioning matters.
We are not merely communicating with the customer standing in front of us.
We may be giving that customer language they later use with someone else.
Best Sellers Can Become Better Sellers
There is a potentially uncomfortable commercial dynamic here.
Popular products can become more popular partly because they are popular.
The more people buy them:
the more gardens contain them
the more consumers encounter them
the more familiar they become
the more recommendations they generate
the more credible popularity signals become
This is one reason established varieties can be difficult for new introductions to displace.
The incumbent product does not simply have sales history.
It has a population.
Thousands of specimens are already working in the market.
A new variety has none of that.
Which means launching horticultural innovation may require deliberately creating visible early adopters.
Seed the Influencers Who Actually Matter
When marketers hear “influencer,” they often think social media.
Follower counts.
Creators.
Sponsored content.
But the most influential person for a gardening decision may live two houses away.
The enthusiastic gardener on the corner.
The person whose yard everyone admires.
The president of the local garden club.
The employee who maintains the spectacular containers outside a popular café.
The landscaper responsible for several gardens in one development.
These people create visible proof.
A local gardening influencer may have 600 Instagram followers.
But 150 neighbours physically pass their front garden every week.
Influence should not always be measured digitally.
Sometimes it has a postal code.
There Is a Difference Between Inspiration and Normalization
This is subtle.
A spectacular botanical garden inspires.
A neighbour’s garden normalizes.
The botanical garden says:
Look what is possible.
The neighbour says:
People around here do this.
Those are different psychological jobs.
For new horticultural products and gardening practices, normalization may sometimes be more commercially important.
Once consumers regularly see something:
a fruit plant on a patio
native plants in front yards
climbing roses on fences
pollinator gardens
compact vegetable systems
the question begins shifting from:
Why would someone do that?
to:
Should I do that too?
That transition is enormously valuable.
Social Proof Can Also Work Against Us
There is a darker side.
Suppose a garden-centre display is almost untouched.
Customers may infer:
Nobody wants these.
Suppose every neighbour has conventional turf.
A homeowner considering an alternative landscape may hesitate.
Suppose a new plant is nowhere to be seen locally.
The lack of visible adoption can itself become information.
Social norms are not automatically helpful.
They reinforce what already appears normal.
This is why marketers need to be careful when communicating low adoption.
Consider an environmental campaign saying:
“Very few gardeners currently plant for pollinators.”
The intention is to encourage improvement.
But the descriptive message is:
Almost nobody does this.
That can accidentally reinforce the undesirable norm.
Social-norm research has repeatedly warned about this problem.
If you want behaviour to spread, be cautious about advertising how uncommon it currently is.
Never Tell the Customer Nobody Is Buying It
This sounds comically obvious in retail.
Yet consider the language sometimes used for new products:
“Nobody knows about this yet.”
“This hasn’t really caught on.”
“We haven’t sold many.”
Technically honest.
Commercially disastrous.
The consumer came looking for evidence.
We just supplied evidence that everyone else passed.
A better framing, if true, might be:
New this season.
That explains low familiarity without turning low adoption into a negative social signal.
Novelty and unpopularity are not psychologically identical.
Use Local Proof Whenever Possible
This may be the most practical takeaway.
If social proof becomes stronger when the reference group feels relevant, then horticultural retailers should become much better at localizing evidence.
Instead of:
Best Seller
consider:
Our #1-selling climbing rose in Western Canada
Instead of:
Customer Favourite
perhaps:
A favourite with Prairie gardeners
Instead of:
Popular perennial
perhaps:
One of our most reordered perennials by Canadian garden centres
Where accurate, these claims combine popularity with context.
That makes the social evidence more diagnostic.
Retail Staff Carry Social Information Too
Think about one of the most natural questions shoppers ask employees:
“What would you choose?”
That is not purely a horticultural question.
It is social.
The customer wants to borrow someone else’s judgment.
Employees often respond with technical reasoning.
“I prefer this because it has stronger branching and better disease resistance.”
Useful.
But sometimes the most persuasive part may be:
“We sell a lot of these and customers come back asking for them.”
Now we have technical proof and social proof together.
Or:
“I have this one at home.”
Those six words can carry extraordinary weight.
Why?
The salesperson has personally crossed the gap between recommending the product and owning it.
Social Proof Should Follow the Question
Like all behavioural tools, social proof can be overused.
Not every plant needs a badge.
Not every sign should shout:
BEST SELLER!
MOST POPULAR!
EVERYONE LOVES THIS!
Eventually the effect becomes wallpaper.
Use social proof where it answers a genuine consumer question.
Is this proven?
Do people grow this here?
Is this a safe introduction?
Has this performed well?
Is anybody else doing this?
The social signal should resolve something.
Otherwise it becomes decoration.
Show the Customer the Community
Digital marketing gives us extraordinary possibilities here.
Imagine a variety webpage containing:
professional product photography
technical information
and then:
Growing in Canadian Gardens
Actual customer photographs.
Vancouver.
Calgary.
Regina.
Winnipeg.
Toronto.
Halifax.
Different gardens.
Different homes.
Different climates.
Now the product page contains more than manufacturer claims.
It contains evidence of participation.
This does not replace professional photography.
It adds another type of credibility.
The customer can see that the plant has left the catalogue and entered real life.
The Map Could Become Marketing
Imagine taking that one step further.
Not exact customer addresses.
A simple regional visualization.
Growing successfully across Canada
Pins representing participating gardeners or verified retailer/customer photographs.
Suddenly distribution becomes visible.
A consumer sees:
People grow this near me.
This is especially interesting for hardy plants, fruit varieties and regionally sensitive products.
The map becomes social proof wrapped around horticultural suitability.
That could be a surprisingly powerful digital asset.
Plants Can Create Their Own Markets
Return to that first hydrangea.
Someone planted it.
The grower made one sale.
But economically, perhaps the story was not finished.
The plant flowered magnificently.
Six neighbours saw it.
Two asked about it.
One took a photograph.
Another eventually bought one.
The following year another appeared farther down the street.
The product created exposure simply by performing well.
This suggests something important.
Garden performance is not only a post-purchase customer-satisfaction issue.
It can become pre-purchase marketing for somebody else.
The best horticultural product does not simply make the original customer happy.
It can generate demand around itself.
Five Questions Worth Asking
Retailers, growers and marketers might ask:
- Which products already have genuine local popularity we could communicate?
- Are we capturing photographs of plants performing in real customer gardens?
- Can customers see evidence that people in their region successfully grow these products?
- Are we giving gardeners simple stories they can repeat when neighbours ask about their plants?
- Which new products could benefit from strategically creating visible early adoption?
Then perhaps the most interesting question:
What happens to our marketing after the plant leaves the store?
For most horticultural businesses, we largely stop thinking about it.
Perhaps we shouldn’t.
Everybody Else Is Planting One
There is a point when a product stops feeling novel.
It becomes familiar.
Then normal.
Eventually, perhaps, expected.
We see this all through horticulture.
Plants move through neighbourhoods.
Garden styles spread.
Ideas reproduce.
One raised bed becomes four.
One pollinator garden becomes several.
One spectacular flowering shrub produces questions.
Humans are social animals.
We watch one another.
Especially when we are uncertain.
And gardening gives us an unusually public theatre in which to do it.
That creates a fascinating possibility.
The customer walking out of the garden centre carrying a rose may be more than a customer.
They may be the beginning of the next advertisement.
Plant it beside the front walk.
Let it grow.
Let it flower.
Let the neighbours see it.
Sooner or later someone may stop and ask:
“What is that?”
And the sales process quietly begins again.
Sources
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Robert B. Cialdini, 1984.
A Focus Theory of Normative Conduct: Recycling the Concept of Norms to Reduce Littering in Public Places
Robert B. Cialdini, Raymond R. Reno and Carl A. Kallgren, 1990.
A Room with a Viewpoint: Using Social Norms to Motivate Environmental Conservation in Hotels
Noah J. Goldstein, Robert B. Cialdini and Vladas Griskevicius, 2008.
Adding Native Plants to Home Landscapes: The Roles of Attitudes, Social Norms, and Situational Strength
Environmental psychology researchers, 2020.
Horticultural Availability and Homeowner Preferences Drive Plant Diversity and Composition in Urban Yards
Urban ecology researchers, 2020.
Uptake and Engagement of Activities to Promote Native Species in Private Gardens
Biodiversity and conservation researchers, 2020.
Residents Manage Dynamic Plant Communities: Change Over Time in Urban Vegetation
Urban ecology researchers, 2022.
Determinants of Willingness to Add Pollinator Beneficial Plants to Residential Yards Differ by Plant Type
Amélie Y. Davis and Jessica Stoyko, 2024.