The Blogging Nurseryman by Trey Pitsenberger

It’s easy to miss the little serendipitous event that happen in your life. I sometimes think that if we didn’t feel so harried and stressed in our lives we would pick up more on these magical moments. I write this blog without many expectations. It’s another way for me to express myself and I enjoy communicating with the various commenter’s that come to the blog. It’s fun to hear from people over the world, including fellow nursery people. On such person is Jodie of Glenwild Gardens in Bloomingdale, New Jersey, who occasionally visits and comments at this blog.

The other day a lady came in from Carmichael, near Sacramento came to visit the nursery. How did she find out about us? She is a high school friend of Jodie, and was told by Jodie she might like to visit us! Who would have thought that a connection made more than half way across the country, via the internet would result in a new customer?

Over at The Golden Gecko Garden Forum, Steve from 10-20 media.com has a great post on how the best way for independent garden centers to use the Internet might be. He mentions making sure that the focus is on local customers. Of course you get to decide what local means to you. My contact made in New Jersey brought me a customer here. What a wonderful and amazing world we live in!

Before this blog The Golden Gecko Garden Center had garden forum. It worked well except we found it very difficult to post pictures. That was one reason we started this blog, it’s easier to post pictures. Other than that I liked the idea that anyone who was registered could start a conversation at the forum, and anyone could answer.

We started up the forum again! It can be found here. What’s neat about the forum is any number of topics can be brought up over time. One of the first forums is for those of us in the business of gardening. If you feel you can contribute or just want to check in and see what being said at the forum all you have to do is register, log in, and your ready to go. To register you’ll have to use your e-mail address. I can assure you we don’t collect e-mails for any other reason than for registering.

We will add topics to the forum as we, or you see fit. I started the “business of gardening” forum since I thought those of us in the various garden trades could use a place to meet, comment, and learn. My blog is a great way for me to start a conversation, but what if you want to start one but don’t have a blog? Now you can post your thoughts and feelings at the forum. The goal is for anyone to be able to use this without my input. I will jump in if I have something important to say, but entire conversations can take place without my involvement.

The forum will expand to include subjects other than professionals and their interests. We want to start local conversations about gardens and gardeners in our area, as well as conversations that have interests outside our geographic area. The possibilities are endless.

You’ll find a link at the bottom right hand side of this blog. There will also be a link at our main website thegoldengecko.com. When we send out our e-news to our mailing list customers the forum will have a link on the e-news so people can visit right from there. We want to see if we can get more of our local community involved, so forum topics concerning the dust up over native plants requirements in Placerville , or the looming water restrictions we could face, could be addressed.

Check it out and let me know what you think. Has anyone else in the garden center business had any experience with forums at their business? Are there any other garden centers doing this?

Some observations from mid-spring of 2008 at our garden center. Here in northern California we are just now passing through our first heat wave. Temperatures in the mid 90’s F. cooled sales. Now it seems we are headed back to temperatures in the 70’s F. Hopefully that will re-invigorate the last minute spring shoppers. Around here school gets out around the end of May and that signals the end of spring sales. The kids demand attention, vacations are planed, and the garden goes into cruise control. So we still have a couple of weeks to rock and roll!

I have noticed an increased interest in the growing of vegetables and fruit trees by my customers. I find it quite exciting! Huge potential! We are increasing the size of our demonstration gardens here at the nursery. We have planted eight types of tomatoes, seven varieties of peppers, squash, lettuce, artichoke, etc. Our goal is to supply ourselves with all the vegetables we need, but have some leftover to sell at the store. We are growing everything in raised beds and containers, which is important here in the Sierra Nevada where the soil is often lacking. It’s about demonstrating exactly how to go about doing it your-self. We are becoming a learning center.

Somethings happening here. The store is entering into a new phase. It’s starting to gain its stride entering into it’s fifth year. It’s as if what we believed in is starting to take root with the people who matter the most, our fans and customers. It takes a while for a level of trust to build with a community. People need to test your ideas.

Here is the big idea that I am taking away from what has transpired so far here for spring of 2008. People are excited about growing their own vegetables, fruits, and in enhancing their environment. They want to succeed! We recommend organic solutions first, and the customers here are quite willing to give it a try. What a great opportunity to present new ideas.

We are open seven days a week and we are each working about six days a week right now. Make hay while the sun shines. This business is not for the faint hearted. Never the less I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else. We are on in the midst of great changes in our relationship with our gardens. It’s hard to put a finger on it but I can feel it. It re-invigorates me with the same felling I had when I entered into this business in the 70’s. It seemed back then that horticulture was cool and worthy of a lifetime of pursuit. Then it seemed horticulture kind of went out of style for a decade or two. Well, I think it’s back. Where else can you make such an immediate impact on your own corner of the world. As the small garden center or nursery becomes the trusted source of all things garden related, it only makes sense that that a younger person looking for a career could see all the possibilities of being that trusted source.

We talked before about how in the future customer reviews that show up on search results for our businesses will be a big part of our image. Good or bad, what people think of us will be there for all to read. So what happens when business try to make themselves look good with reviews that seem a little suspicious?

When you Google 95650 plants a group of garden centers not to far from us comes up. When I see a business with a inordinate amount of reviews I want to check it out. 31 reviews is a lot more than any other business. When you read the reviews most we’re posted during the same week.

Now I am not saying these reviews we’re posted by anyone other than the customers. Maybe the nursery offered some kind of incentive for the customer to post their reviews. I still think that un-solicited reviews are the ones that ring most true. What does this say about the business? I’ll leave that to you.

Over at Sara’s Green Space she has pictures of the new Urban Outfitters Store, Terrain. This move by Urban Outfitters into the nursery business has the industry all a twitter. Take a look and see what you think. I like the look. It looks like something Smith & Hawken would put together if they we’re doing it. Just like Smith & Hawken is owned by a large corporation (Scotts), so is Terrain (Urban Outfitters). It’s amazing what you can do to a place when you have unlimited resources (money).

Right on the heals my post about customers rating your business on the internet, we see what one N.Y. Businesses decided to do when they received a bad review from a customer on Amazon. They bribed him to take it down! Here is the story. Talk about digging an even deeper hole. The web never forgets. In addition what could have been solved much easier has now ballooned into a disaster for the company. Why? Because I got this story through Boing-Boing the most popular blog in the world. Now everybody knows.

This kind of stuff makes should you want to re-consider your return policy. Next time that customer comes in with a dead plant return or complaint what are you going to do?

When I started this blog it was going to be for my local customers, but has slowly morphed into a blog that has more of a national and international readership. It has become a way for me to share things that I am passionate about in the horticultural business world. Most likely though this blog doesn’t resonate with someone wanting some gardening information for our area.

One of the advantages of doing this blog is I get to hear from some really cool people in horticulture and new media. One such person is Doug Green of Douggreensgarden.com. Doug was a nurseryman for twenty years, and now makes his living online. Doug was nice enough to contact me recently about my blog, his ventures, and the possibilities and pitfalls of the new media. His post Are Blogs the New Garden Magazine is what put us in contact. He also wrote a post My Garden Blog Gets Changed Yet Again, and Why. Check it out as it has some very useful information on search engines, long term vs. short term memory, etc.

Doug reinforced my own feelings about how we (The Golden Gecko) need to get the word out better to our local audience. While my blog certainly gets far reaching interest, my local customers wanting gardening information may be missing out. The Blogging Nurseryman has a great niche following, people interested in the running of a small garden center as well as industry happenings, but not a lot of local garden information here.

To make sure we are not missing our local audience I am starting a new blog that will deal with gardening in the Sierra Nevada Foothills and Mountains. It will be linked to our web page, e-newsletter, as well as this blog. There seems to be an opportunity here for someone to start a conversation about gardening in our area. Why don’t we start that conversation? This is a rapidly growing area of California and new people from the Bay Area and the LA area are arriving without any knowledge of how to garden here. They will search the web looking for information and we need to make sure we are right up there in the results.

Is this going to be just more work that I am getting into? No, because I am going to clear the deck of time wasters that keep me from doing what I should be doing, interacting with the customer. The future of advertising is to empower our customers to spread the word via their own blogs, participation in garden forums, customers reviews, etc. Using our web page, e-newsletter, and local gardening blog, our hope is to become a vital online resource for gardeners is northern California and specifically The Sierra Nevada Foothills and Mountains. As soon as the new blog is up I’ll let you know.

What do I hope for with The Blogging Nurseryman Blog? It is already doing what I want it to do, which is allowing me to share the joys and frustrations of running our business. It also a great way to meet really cool people.

The cold we experienced late April did more damage than we thought. The small size dissectum Japanese Maples are dead. The larger sizes will come back but will take a month or longer. Still waiting for the Raywood Ash, Walnuts, and other plants to send out new leaves. The local vineyards have been hit hard. Venezios Winery had half of their crop destroyed. The grape plants live, the grapes where killed. Other local vineyards are reporting like results. 2008 won’t be a vintage many will want to remember.

A couple of commenter’s asked if we could have done more to protect the plants. Being in the foothills we are constantly covering plants every night in the early spring, as we are known for our late frosts. Unfortunately we didn’t think that the plants we hadn’t covered would be hit so hard. My guess is 20% of the plants we carry we’re hit hard enough to prevent their sale this spring.

We getting ready for our 4 anniversary celebration on May 17^th. We do free BBQ, have sales, and give away two shopping sprees. I cannot believe we have been in business this long. Where has the time gone? Here is a truth that I discovered. When you look at the short span it seems that we are never getting to where we want. Looking over the long term I think we underestimate what we can accomplish. This type of business keeps you busy enough that you need to stop, smell the roses and realize just how far we have come.

Check out this post by Elizabeth at Garden Rant titled “Money Back, Replacement, or Tough Luck. It concerns nurseries and plant return policies. This is why I think its important for small nurseries to be involved in blogging and reading garden blogs. These are our customers and they are talking about us. Are we listening? Better yet, are we contributing to the conversation?

I decided to Google the word plants and our zip code to see what comes up. Someone had told me this might be the way people new to the area might try and find plant businesses. Here is the result of plants 95633

Our web site comes up first, good. Hey, we even have a great review from a customer. Got to get a hold of them and give them my thanks. What interested me was when you scroll down to the bottom on that page there is a review for a local florist, Le Fleur. Check out the first and only comment from a customer. “Avoid at all cost!” OUCH!

Here is a small business trying to make it and one customers bad review has probably cost this florist a whole lot of business. The worst part is the business probably doesn’t even know the bad review is up.

If it was my business I would do my best to contact that customer and see if we can make things right. I would even post the details of what we have done to make this customer happy. Even if they don’t change their views at least others will know you tried to make things right.

This could be happening to your garden business right now, and you don’t even know it! Try Googeling your zip code and the word plants, or garden supplies, or something you think customers might Google. Hopefully you’ll find your business, and if there are reviews, good ones.

The moral of this story? You cannot ignore the Internet! This is the future whether we want it or not. This is a HUGE opportunity for us small businesses. If we are a great small business people will find out. If we are a poorly run, unfriendly type of small business, soon everyone will know.

If you would like to get a taste of how out of touch some of the big growers are a trip to Open Register and Gardening Gone Wild will enlighten you.

The California Pack Trials are an industry event where growers try to entice wholesale buyers with the new introductions of flowers and plants. What caught my eye, as well as others is the new “sexy” ad campaign that one grower used. In a attempt to entice the younger generation into gardening they decided that an Abercrombie & Fitch type ad campaign was the way to go. Check out the photos at Gardening Gone Wild.

What I find interesting is what they think is sexy. There are many types of sexy and for some reason some in the horticulture industry think that a Madison Ave. kind of sexy is the way to go. Naked men curled up in a bed of Ostespermum, two girls about to kiss amongst geraniums. It’s phony, and exactly the wrong way to attract younger people who may want to garden. Now I realize that the Pack Trails are not intended for the general public, but so what. Its old media at work.

Hey everybody, before we write off the Baby Boomers and Generation X lets not forget where our largest customer base comes from. Yea, those two demographics! Throw those two demographics off the bus in an attempt to appeal to the younger generation. “Gen Y” would see right through that kind of ad campaign anyway.

As an independent nursery I am going to ignore all these vain attempts to “appeal” to the younger generation. We going to stick with appealing to our core customer base, Generation Gardener. Young and old enjoy gardening, and both can find out in their own way the sex appeal of gardening. A grandmother can find the same joy in gardening that a 20 something can.

This is another great opportunity for the smaller garden center to differentiate themselves from the big boys. Communicate with your customers either in person or via a blog to really find out what they want. Don’t listen to the industry “experts” that are constantly telling us to try and start appealing to the younger generation. The younger generation is too adept at sniffing out phoniness and blatant attempts at appealing to them anyway.