<b>Trees, Ornamental & Bedding Plant:</b> Know it and show it

Otten Brothers in Minnesota has crafted a patio focus in the outside sales area. Photo: Ian Baldwin.It was 7 p.m. and our intrepid landscape designer had just completed a 45-minute presentation at the kitchen table of a 30-something couple. Her plans and elevation sketches were spread out across the table with a pile of catalogs from nurseries and stone companies, together with photographs of her work and the company’s showpiece client projects.

The couple was trying hard to listen and follow her explanations but with a 12-hour day behind them and a restless toddler to pacify, it wasn’t easy.

The husband, who had been checking his BlackBerry every few minutes, summed up their frustration: “I think we both like your ideas. And the modern style I think you’re describing is what we’re looking for. You obviously know what you are talking about. But some of this is lost on me without real examples of the plants and other things you mentioned. I’m sorry I can’t remember any of their names even now. Doesn’t your company have a retail store, too? I’ve driven past it but never stopped there. Don’t they have examples of your work laid out for you to talk us through it?”

With an embarrassing shrug the designer said, “That would be a great idea, but I’m afraid they don’t do that. I don’t think any companies in town do that.”

And so goes the landscape design/build-garden center predicament. Both industries have very visual products that take time, space, coordination and lots of information to sell. But, because of our own agendas and history, they are usually shown in catalogs or displayed like cans of soup in a supermarket.

Separation anxiety
“Landscaping” has had an on-off relationship with garden retailing for many years. Initially, both disciplines were run by one company on the same site with the same people. Somewhere along the line most owners found they made more money and had less stress by running the two separately.

This seemed to suit both divisions, with very different operations, staff, products and needs. To this day, especially in the West, many large and successful garden centers do not have an in-house design/build landscape department. They simply refer such work to other local companies. The fact is that it’s quite difficult to be equally successful at design/build and retailing.

When new nursery companies start up, they usually embrace both disciplines to reach as many consumers as possible. But, eventually, things tend to separate out as already described. So, in order to have a logical, efficient green-industry company, we keep retail and landscape apart – often to the detriment of the consumers and our bottom lines.

Many readers know what I’m talking about when both divisions share a site and pull from a joint inventory. (“Yesterday those retail guys sold half of those great spirea I just got in for the Herberg job.”) On the flipside, there are customers who spend $20,000 with a company’s landscape division but don’t shop at the garden center because the retail staff doesn’t recognize them as good customers, or possess the same vision of their property that their landscape designer did.

Let’s end the obstacle course
As business from baby boomers declines, the next generations sees green industry companies as just another place to get help with a project. More and more consumers view us in the same light as the kitchen or bathroom contractors they use. If you go to a home improvement store you see the products used in vignettes to show customers how their new bathroom could look.

So why don’t landscape companies have a large, living showroom of ideas? Why do garden centers, even those owned by someone who also owns a landscape company, make shopping such an obstacle course with plants lined up like soldiers on parade? Why do we make consumers figure it out from a multitude of growers’ labels, catalogs and signs?

Many landscape designers would argue that this is a personal-connection industry where, for the amount of money consumers are investing, they want the one-on-one salesperson to hold their hand as they make their decisions. No one is arguing that fact. A similar response comes from garden center owners who insist that their well-qualified and experienced sales staff is their biggest defense against the big box stores.

Laying out the plants as annuals, perennials, shrubs and so on (or worse, alphabetically by botanical name) appeals to employees (and designers sometimes!) because it makes it easy to find items.

For knowledgeable hobbyist customers this was not a big problem, but now with the next generation it is going to be a very big problem unless we show the public our ideas and simulations. With a whole new demographic, the conventional landscape yard/office or garden center is going to have to adapt to remain relevant, or else. After all, many of the younger generation members were raised at Ikea, where vignette displays, a great system of organization and easy shopping experience prevail.

Show, don’t tell
To more easily close sales, landscape companies will either have to “rent” space in a retail facility, such as a garden center or nursery, or install their own showroom away from the dust and noise of the landscape yard.

What’s it going to take to reach the next generation of consumers? Nothing less than complete landscape-size vignettes. Not just a few vendor-sponsored brick patios or retaining walls, but a whole outdoor showroom of patio, decks, balconies, herb gardens, rose gardens, cutting gardens, play areas, escape areas, exercise areas, deep tranquil shade, hot tropical sun, screening nosy neighbors, drowning out the neighbor’s music and countless other suggestions. Why not use some of the space currently occupied by the mulch pile and delivery trucks as a showroom for browsing customers waiting for their appointment?

Whether it is achieved by garden centers leasing or allocating space to a landscape division or by landscapers establishing their own showroom in a retail facility, the way forward must surely be to combine both disciplines at the consumer touch-point even if the operations arising from the sale are run quite differently.

The good news is that the opportunities are huge. Even in a down economy, surveys indicate that the “do it for me” market is still alive, not to mention the many small DIY projects that homeowners are constantly shopping for.

Just think how much more business companies could land if design/build firms could combine with garden centers to adapt even a small part of the retail space from today’s warehouse concept to a showroom of end-results So let’s see a reconnection of design/build and retail focused on customer success, not separated for our own efficiencies. It is there for the taking!

The author is a green industry consultant specializing in garden retail.