September is a dangerous month for a garden-centre buyer. Not because anything particularly dramatic happens. Because everything that happened is still easy to remember. The spring that started badly....
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....
A customer is standing in front of a clematis. Technically, they are looking at a plant in a pot. Perhaps two feet tall. A few flowers. A tag. A...
The horticultural industry loves information. We put it everywhere. On plant tags. On signs. In catalogues. On websites. Inside QR codes. On care sheets. In databases. And, of course,...
A customer picks up a plant. They turn it around. Look at the flowers. Lift it slightly. Put it into their cart. At this point, retailers naturally think the...
There is a sentence almost everyone who sells plants has heard. Usually it comes with a laugh. “I kill everything.” The customer says it casually. Perhaps they are standing...
Ask someone what a litre of gasoline costs and there is a reasonable chance they will know. Milk? Probably close. A cup of coffee? Certainly close enough to complain...
Walk through almost any garden centre late on a warm Saturday afternoon and you can see a small economic experiment taking place. Two hydrangeas sit beside one another. Same...
There is a peculiar moment every spring when gardening suddenly becomes urgent. For weeks, perhaps months, the customer has known spring is coming. They have seen gardening magazines. They...
There is a wonderfully strange experiment in consumer psychology involving jam. Not plants. Not cars. Not mortgages. Jam. Researchers Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper set up a tasting display...