Originally published on February 4, 2013 in East Bay/South Coast Life under the headline “Avoid marketing shtick when plant-shopping”
In between staring out of windows dreaming about my garden and scraping scale off my houseplants, I have spent time lately reading catalogs cover to cover. Seed catalogs, plant catalogs, tool catalogs … If it’s about the garden and they’re selling stuff, I want to know all about it and I might even order something. Sight unseen if necessary because some of the catalogs, Chiltern Seeds for one, don’t even have pictures. What they have are great descriptions written in a way that makes me want everything.
That got me thinking about plant shopping. I know I’m not alone in ordering from catalogs. It’s one of the most gratifying ways for gardeners to spend an ugly winter day indoors. And as much as I’d rather spend money locally and probably you do too, there are plants available elsewhere that sound pretty great. And like you, I’m perfectly willing to take my chances on a plant destined to arrive on my doorstep either half dormant or still in its seed. But everything changes when we visit nurseries in the spring. Faced with tangible choices we’re much more likely to buy something in bloom than something that’s not. I’ve been seduced and so have you. It’s OK to admit it because those plants have been forced into bloom, unseasonably sometimes, on purpose. But it’s a marketing tactic aimed more for non-gardeners than you and me.
I learned recently, in a PowerPoint lecture full of pie charts given by a marketing executive from “The No. 1 Plant Brand,” that I am not their target customer and neither are you. She (they know she’s a she because their research says so) has a new favorite color every year. So far we’re the same. She is busy. Yup, me too. She wants a beautiful garden. Ditto. But she doesn’t want to actually garden in her garden. Say again? She wants a no-maintenance garden. Where’s the fun in that and does such a thing exist? (No.) She’s also afraid of botanical nomenclature and thinks we’re snooty smarty-pants for ever using Latin for clarity’s sake.
But I don’t think she’s a lost cause. She simply doesn’t yet know that gardening is a great way to work up a sweat on Saturday mornings or decompress for an hour after work. She doesn’t know that plants aren’t furniture, and that insects aren’t fascinating. She still marks time by a calendar, rather than by snowdrops, bees, pussy willow, daisies, daylilies, Joe-Pye weed and frost. Clearly, she needs us.
I like to think that the marketing executives hope that she will be bitten by the gardening bug and become as plant-geeky and into it as you and me. But evidently it’s more lucrative to validate and cater to her lack of interest because every year more plants are introduced that “bloom all summer!” and are “no-maintenance!”
The problem is, I’m as taken in by catchy trademark names and promises as she is. A sweet alyssum (Lobularia) called “Snow Princess” that blooms non-stop? Bring it. And it’s true — that alyssum is sterile and pushes out flowers through heat and well past frost. But it lacks the delicacy of the seed catalog varieties. (Those might burn out mid-summer, but you can expect their self-sown seeds to germinate and pick up the show as soon as environmentally possible.) The same goes for “Knock Out” roses: They bloom all summer without deadheading! But they’re ungraceful plants and the flowers have no fragrance. Sometimes a rose is not much of a rose.
I figure it’s up to us to show this gal the alternatives and turn the industry on its ear. To persist in buying plants that aren’t in bloom yet but will be when the time is right. To put at least as many Rhody Natives on our cart as Proven Winners. To show everyone that a healthy garden buzzes, hums, lives and dies and is more gorgeous for its process and our hand in it. And that winter days are better spent reading about and ordering rarities and oddities from catalogs than not.
What I didn’t mention in the column – but I will now – was how offensive the marketing exec was. His prime directive was evidently to convince an auditorium full of industry professionals to dumb it down and make it extra shiny. He suggested that nurseries and garden centers should be reconstituted as “Life-Style Centers,” and that plants should be displayed by color rather than alphabetical order because “she” doesn’t speak Latin. But I do and so do you and we open our wallets for plants too. I don’t pretend to know what the answer is. I see nurseries struggling and I know they need to keep reaching out to a broader market. But anywhere my choices are limited to what some marketing dude thinks “she” wants, I’m outie.
kristin green | trench manicure 
Awesome post.
Here’s my not-so-humble opinion: I, too, see nurseries struggling and know that they need to reach out to new markets. However, I don’t understand deliberately dumbing-down and “shining” up their products for the “she” that the exec wants to target… at least not to the point where they alienate gardeners like you and me. There has to be a way to make gardening accessible and beginner-friendly, while still providing things like Latin names for those of us who care about that sort of thing.
Here’s my thought: Instead of condescending, hook “her” with beginner-accessible name tags, and recipes for wowing “her” friends with things like homemade, home-grown pesto, and other gravy type items like that. But keep the meat and pototoes (like Latin names and challenging houseplants) available, so you can feed her when she comes back really hungry.
As a side note: Since they also are less likely to pay for people who know plants to work at these kinds of places, I’ve seen lots of newbies get BAD advice from employees… and by bad, I mean the kind of advice that’s going to set them up to fail and never want to stick a trowel into the dirt again. Are they not ruining their own business? Regardless, when people ask me (since they know I’m a gardener) for advice on where to go to buy plants, I rarely send them to those places. I just can’t do it.
(Sorry for the long, rambling comment there, by the way. You got me a little fired up–as a former garden center employee, this is a topic near and dear to my heart! 🙂
Kim – don’t be sorry for that! You nailed it. I wish you had been in the audience… But isn’t this industry a bitch? I can’t imagine that many nurseries can afford to pay people what they’re worth because their customers aren’t used to paying what the plants are truly worth. – There are box stores in the neighborhood after all. The best nurseries – the ones we go back to and send our friends to – must somehow manage to hire and hold on to people who are willing to work there for the love of it, not for the awesome paycheck. (Same might be said of those who work for non-profit public gardens…) Agree? Disagree? -kris
I think the only way out is envy. If our gardens kick the trash out of theirs to the point that they are embarrassed about it, maybe they will come around just to keep up with the Joneses.
At least that’s what I keep telling myself to justify my expenditures.
Susan, Garden on. I’ve seen that very theory work and it’s a beautiful thing. (Buffalo, NY) -kris
Kris, I totally agree! On all points. And I’m going to stop myself before I go off again about my mixed feelings (which are more hate than love) about the big box stores… haha.
Susan, I’m completely on board with your theory. I think my husband is going to love that new excuse this spring! 😉
Mixed feelings about box stores? You are more generous than I am! -kris
Wow! So well said, Kris.
As the owner of one of those little nurseries that cater to plant lovers, I often hear from visitors how thrilled they are that we have plants nobody else has, and how our plants perform so much better than plants they’ve bought at the big box stores. Thank you for letting out one of the dirty little secrets of the mass market plant trade: Push these babies with fertilizer and lots of heat so they’re blooming away in April, when many of our plants and gardens are just waking up from dormancy. How difficult it is to resist a pot of color in early spring! How poorly many of these plants transition into the garden is the lesson that needs to be learned.
That marketing exec knows selling. Proven Winners Brand is making money, and wouldn’t we all like to? (Need to, actually, we’ll be old someday, and may not be able to work any longer). Yes, but those of us who are in love with our gardens know that it is more than about money. It is a way of life. That’s the marketing strategy that we want to push. Consider this. Many folks are turning to raising chickens and growing their on food, which is a labor of love, and perhaps not very economical (the chickens anyway) but is the connection to a way of life that seems pure and whole.
Kathy, thanks! I thought of you… And I totally (want to) believe that anyone who gets turned on by growing their own food from seed, starts, chicks, whatever will find that it’s a slippery slope to true mad love for all kinds of crazy-cool plants and the garden as a verb. All they need to do is visit Avant Gardens! -kris