The Blogging Nurseryman by Trey Pitsenberger

It would appear that the DIY Network has canceled the series Fresh from the Garden with host Joe Lamp’l. Joe say’s, “Each episode featured one or two different vegetables while demonstrating everything you needed to know to grow that particular plant, from seed to harvest in a single 30-minute episode. Never before or after have I seen such a series. We completed 52 informative and comprehensive episodes, covering just about every vegetable you could possibly grow over three years of taping the series around Atlanta, Georgia”. Apparently the shows are done and ready to be aired, yet DIY network has canceled the show for, “a much more edgy style these days.”So in the face of a huge growth of interest in vegetables the show is canceled.

Television as we know it is dying. While I do feel for Joe, what has happened was not unexpected. The networks just don’t have the advertising coming in to keep these shows going. In their desperation they want to come up with something more “edgy”, as if that will bring back all the lost viewers. Reading the comments after Joe’s post at Garden Rant, many feel the solution would be to get Oprah, or some other big star to have Joe on. This would magically get everyone interested in gardening, because once your on Oprah you have it made. Not! Things have changed.

Gardening is made up of a hundreds of niches now.  Hydroponic growers, indoor growers, herb growers, organic vegetable growers, non-organic vegetable growers, native plant enthusiasts, locovores, lawn enthusiasts, anti-lawn enthusiasts, poison gardens, etc., etc., etc. Pick your niche and there is a web site or group built around it. As a garden center owner our job is to pick the niches we want to service and then really service them. We choose to focus on the organic vegetable grower, and as such we don’t sell synthetic fertilizers like Miracle-Gro. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a huge niche that want’s Miracle-Gro, it’s just not our focus. Let the competition have that niche, as we don’t have time to give our best to both groups. When you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one.

This is the problem for networks like DIY. They have to please their sponsors. As sponsors find it harder and harder to interrupt us with their message, they turn to “more edgy” programing which really pleases no one. And the downward spiral continues for these networks. Why do I want to watch TV, when I can interact and learn so much more right here? Thus the conundrum now facing TV, Magazines, and the other Big Boys in the Horticultural world. As the market fragments into millions of different niches and interests, how do you get our attention? By calling me constantly during business hours, or e-mailing everyday even after I have unsubscribed a hundred times form something I never subscribed to? (Thanks a lot AARP, who does this everyday to me. I will never belong to a group that uses such tactics.) Watching TV now you don’t even have to watch the ads, (TIVO anyone?) Why would sponsors want to sponsor shows where we just fast forward through the ads?

None of us know where this is headed.  I do know where we want to focus our energies, and that’s on the people who already show an interest in gardening, and want to learn more. The person who comes in and asks how our prices compare to Home Depot is not our target market. They are of course welcome to shop with us, and maybe they will see the difference is about more than price. Yet, I cannot get upset if they leave and don’t come back. I have people that want to shop with us, and I need to focus on them. My advertising is almost exclusively e-news oriented. It is sent to people who have signed up to receive it, and therefore more apt to respond to our message.

I have never thought that the majority of Americans would embrace gardening. When I say “we need to get ourselves back to the garden” I am talking about the people that “get it”. Driving down a typical suburban neighborhood around here I would expect if 1 in 10 homes converted their lawn to a garden we would be having amazing success. I don’t think those other 9 homes will change much. Most people just find gardening too much work. That’s o.k. from a small garden centers standpoint. I don’t need the majority of people to come into my store, just the 10% or 20% that are committed, and loyal. Let them spread the word both verbally, and through the internet. Maybe if enough people post about Joe and his show, DIY might bring it back. I just don’t think the network has a sustainable model in the long run. Joe might want to market his ideas on his own network, via the internet. It wont reach quite as many people as DIY network, but it will reach those who truly want to hear the message.

The power of advertising is now within us all. Your blog might be small, not read by many people. However, every time you write a post it becomes a part of the history of the net. The tail just gets longer and longer. So you had a bad experience at a store, or got great service at another, then write about it! Promote those people and places that you like. Link to them. It will make a difference in this new world where word of mouth will rule, and can be amplified via the net. That’s the really scary part for the advertisers. You have the power now. Their products or service will have to actually be endorsed by real people who have used the products.

I think this new paradigm will benefit the smaller operations who for so long couldn’t afford interruption marketing in the past. We need to give our customers something to “write home about”, except now when they write it’s not just to home, but the world. Spread the word…

Things have changed!

Just a year ago with the economy booming, we had a different set of assumptions about how to appeal to a customer base that seemed to be giving up on gardening.

Here we sit today with a completely different set of circumstances. Interest seems to be growing in vegetable and fruit tree gardening, and I believe this may translate over into ornamental sales as well. Most folks have no chance to sell their homes for a profit, so many will be staying put. They will soon want to “feather their nest”, creating a refuge from the world outside their yards. I believe we are entering an era not unlike what we saw in the seventies with a new appreciation for “the garden”. Do you remember the song Woodstock by Joan Baez with the verse, “We are stardust, billion year old carbon, we are golden, caught in the devil’s bargain, and we’ve got to get ourselves, back to the garden?” We are, 40 years later.

The nursery industry has tried to use semantics to try and sway people to the garden. Let’s not call it a garden, lets call it an “outdoor space”, complete with a television, and enormous BBQ. There we can entertain our friends in our professionally designed, “outdoor room” that we so surely deserved.

Sorry, but that’s played out, and not going to come around again for awhile. Now people want to grow stuff in a garden that supplies food for the family, a hangout for friends and family, as well as enhances the neighborhood and world. Bird sanctuaries, herb gardening, vegetables, fruit, beauty, and most important, people seem to be willing to put the effort in to be successful.

What a fantastic opportunity for the garden center business. “Let’s get back to the garden” and do what we do best, teaching people how to be accomplished gardeners. I think the whole, “let’s not call it gardening, because that means work”, is dead! Let’s face facts, and be honest with our customers. It’s called gardening, it can become a hobby, and it requires a certain amount of work. Yes, you should test your soil pH for the best results. Yes, you should apply dormant spray three times in the winter for best fruit production. Yes, having a great garden may mean getting a sore back after a day in the garden. It means monitoring the vegetable garden every day, and if you want to do it organically, it’s the only way. We need to become aware of the seasons again, as well as what it means to put food on the table. The above doesn’t mean it won’t be fun, we just need to change our priorities.

The horticultural businesses have fragmented, and it’s time for the small, locally owned garden centers to take advantage of it. The large concerns have to worry about appealing to the masses, we just need to appeal to the people who want to learn how to make their way through the new reality that we are all experiencing. Teach them why it’s important to know your pH, and they will buy pH meters, and other soil testing devices so they, and we can be successful. They will spend money if shown why it’s important. Let’s stop the term, “add on sales”! That sounds like we are just adding on more stuff to buy. Teach, teach, teach! We are teachers, and our students don’t want sugar coated pablum. They want the truth!

Here is the truth as I see it. It’s called gardening, and those that practice it are called gardeners. The term “gardener” will once again be a source of pride, especially amongst the younger generations. It can become a hobby, if you lucky enough, and stick with it. Plants have Latin names for a reason. Like any hobby there are times when it’s hard work, but you look past it because you love the results. Those of us that have businesses that sell plants have a place called a “garden center”, or “nursery”. Gardens sometimes don’t come out the way we expected, or what the garden magazines pictured. DIFM (Do it for me) is being replaced by IDIM (I did it myself), or WDIO (We did it ourselves). Organic is here to stay, and you best get on that bandwagon.

All this doesn’t mean we are regressing to some type of agrarian society. There are loads of modern devices and techniques that can be utilized to make gardening better, and more fun. We are entering into a golden age for gardening. We need to stay positive, get to know our customers, and quit reacting to every breathless media report about, “the death of gardening”. It’s not dying, it’s gaining a whole new lease on life. What a wonderful time to be in the garden business!

Today, between 11 and 12, is my annual talk with The Auburn Garden Club. I will be talking about what’s new at the garden center.This year, more than ever in the past what’s new is not a plant or tool but a new attitude. People are looking to take control of their lives and one way they seem to be expressing this is through renewed interest in gardening. They seem very interested in new ideas about gardening like ‘Backyard Orchard Culture”, which shows how to have more fruit varieties, successively ripening, in your backyard. Another area of renewed interest is in organics, and how to create a more healthy garden environment. My sales of conventional snail bait has all but washed up compared to organics like “Sluggo”. Most all my fertilizers are now organic, as well as our pesticides.

There also seems to be a willingness to put in the extra effort to garden. It would seem to me that for the time being, DIFM (do it for me) is waning. Not the DIFM that involves putting together a color bowl already finished and selling it, but rather the ‘install my landscape for me”. I am glad we never started a landscape division when it was so popular. People are buying pH meters to test the soil, they are buying seed starting kits and starting vegetables and flowers now. They seem more willing to invest time an material into doing it right and having success with their efforts.

I see plenty of younger people just starting out with their first gardens. The interest and willingness is there, just not the practical knowledge. We have a whole generation or two that has been off the farm, and the things that we in the business take for granted are brand new to them. What a fantastic opportunity for us to lead them in the right direction and build a customer for life. My only advice for dealing with this new generation of gardeners, as well as all gardeners is be “authentic”.  “Authenticity’ is in such short supply these days that those that do posses this atribute will have no problem kepping and gaining customers. Authenticity means no sugar coating what it means to get dirty and garden. Yes, it’s sometimes it’s to hot or cold outside. You can also fail at some gardening attempt and have to try again. Sometimes your back might hurt after a day in the garden. These are not negatives if you look at what gardening means in the long run, a better world just outside your door.

One thing garden clubs should do is have a web page. It doesn’t have to be fancy, it can even be free.  We started our preschool and daycare blog at Wordpress for free. 

I don’t want to worry about SEO (search engine optimization) or other reasons it might be good to own your domain, etc. Just get that web page or blog up and running so members, or potential members can become involved. Lot’s of younger people might be interested in joining a garden club, but working during the day when most meetings are held makes it hard to ever attend. So what? Let them attend virtually via the internet. Sure it might be better to get out and physically be with others in the club, but if you can’t attend at least you can keep up with what’s going on via the blog.

I read an interesting post today at Seth Godin’s web site. The post “Music vs. The Music Industry” has crossover appeal to those of us in the garden industry. He say’s, “the music industry is really focused on the ‘industry’ part and not so much on the ‘music’ part.” As we all know the music industry is dying, while the interest in music grows. Um…could this also be written as “the garden industry is really focused on the ‘industry’ part and not so much the ‘garden’ part? Seth continues, “The shift that is happening right now is that the people who insist on keeping the world as it was are going to get more and more frustrated until they lose their jobs. People who want to invent a whole new set of rules, a new paradigm, can’t believe their good fortune and how lucky they are that the people in the industry aren’t noticing an opportunity…”

It seems to me that gardening is growing in interest, while the industry is going through a decline. That’s why I never bought into the “is gardening dead?” mantra. It’s more like the garden industry as “we know it” that’s dying. Horticultural media, including all those glossy magazines that asked if gardening is dying are now the ones dying, not gardening. The job of information gathering and dispersal has fallen to the garden bloggers. Just like music where indie groups and their fans are taking down the music industry. They are not taking it down on purpose, just finding the music they want without the industries help.

Maybe I am wrong. I am sure every large horticultural concern hopes I am. I have lots of friends in this industry, and I hate to see them out of work. That doesn’t change the facts that confront us. Gardening is growing in interest, being spread by people with passion, while our industry seems to be caught in a time warp, trying to keep alive a way of life that is quickly disappearing.

What do you think?

There are a lot of articles out now about businesses that blog. Here is a good article titled “Do Garden Blogs Matter?” It’s aimed at the garden center trade. Here is why I blog.

I blog because I get to meet the most amazing people. I published a post on May 25th 2007, about the ladybug breeding ground near here.   Just yesterday I had Ingo Arndt, a German wildlife photographer here taking pictures of the breeding ground. This guy flew all the way from Germany based on e-mails from me, and that blog post. He is doing a project on hibernating for a European version of National Geographic. How did he find me? Google “ladybug breeding ground” and see what comes up. What an amazing wonderful world we live in! Could this have happened 10, or even 5 years ago? He promised to send some of the photographs, which I will post when they arrive.

I have found my most popular posts are ones where I simply write about what interests me. The Patent Navel Orange Tree Post from 2005 is another. It may be my most widely read post over the years. I get visitors to that post everyday. Why? It got picked up by Wikipedia for its article oranges.  I am footnote #2.

Blogging should be fun for the blogger. Don’t blog just to blog, or because it’s “the thing to do”. Blog because it opens up a world of wonder, that I am amazed at every (well almost) every day.

According to Home Channel News, Jim Hagedorn, CEO of Scotts/Miracle Gro say’s, “he would sell Smith & Hawken for a reasonable offer. But until then, Scotts intends to ‘run it hard.’” At a recent investors conference on February 10th it was learned that, “Scotts upscale Smith & Hawken lawn-and-garden chain recorded a 23 percent drop in sales to $31.9 million, suffering from a big decline in holiday sales”. Some major reductions have taken place including, “‘job cuts and pay cuts. Anybody who stayed, unless they’re operating a store, had to agree to a 25 percent pay reduction, and they did,’ Hagedorn said.”

Interesting is the news that, “overall, Scotts Miracle-Gro reported a first-quarter loss of $57 million, on sales of $318 million — up 3 percent over sales in the same quarter last year.” Scotts has put their hope in Pat Farrah who was one of the founders of Home Depot. According to Hagedorn, “‘He is one of the best merchants in the world, for sure, and he’s got some team members he added that, I think, can get this thing righted.’”

Any bets?

One of the things I enjoy most about the internet is the ability for like minded people to find one another. I mentioned awhile ago how I was burning out on social sites. Just too many to keep track of. I have finally narrowed it down to LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. These three sites seem to offer something just different enough to keep me interested. Between the three I am making lots of great connections with old friends and classmates, as well as a whole world of great new people.

One of the things that impresses me is the positive attitude of most of the people I meet. Perhaps its the nature of the medium, attracting outgoing people who enjoy interacting. Or maybe people are a lot more realistic and positive than the main stream media, or our state and national leaders seem to be. With all the negativity out there it provides a perfect opportunity for local leaders to step forward and provide a positive message. This is one area where I feel the local garden center has a place. Rather than just sit back and wonder whether people will return to the center in spring, we need to provide a positive message than compels people to rethink gardening. Gardening, not landscaping or accesorizing the outdoors.

Here is an opportunity to show people how to take back control of their lives. Through gardening we become more in tune with the natural world, which naturally provides  a more positive outlook. The local garden center should be a place where enthusiasm and a “you can do it” spirit prevails. Let’s not sugar coat what it means to garden. Yes, it sometimes involves sweat, dirt, and precious time, but where else can you connect with nature, and contribute to creating a better world without driving anywhere.

I think we have been  making too much about how different the younger generations view gardening. I think we are going to find out that many of the younger generation are very interested in gardening. Real gardening, not DIFM (do it for me) or other “trends.” I think there are a lot of the younger generation who would agree with Katie at Garden Punks. She say’s “I started this blog (Garden Punks) back in 2006 because I felt like the only 20-something that was remotely interested in gardening. From there, this blog grew into more than just dirt and plants, namely our efforts to leave a lighter footprint on this earth, mixed with our commitment to cut our consumption and energy use, with a few recipes and failures mixed in.”

With the internet we find out that she is not the only “20 something” that is interested in gardening.  I think there are plenty of 20 somethings out there that are dying to dig up the ornamental trees and plant fruit trees in their yard. Check out what Katie did at her home. I guarantee that other 20 somethings read that post, and are inspired to do it themselves.  Katie makes a point of shopping locally and with independent, locally owned business. This bodes well for smaller garden centers, that can inspire a whole new generation of gardeners. Yes, there are differences between how the younger generation looks at gardening and gardens, yet I feel we are making way too much about those differences.

Over at Zanthan Gardens they are having a discussion about Burpee’s 2009 catalogue. What’s interesting is the discussion got the attention of George Ball, President of Burpee. George writes his own blog, Heronswood Voice. George has jumped into the discussion by commenting at Zanthan Gardens, responding to other comments. This is the first example I can find an executive of a large horticultural corporation responding to garden blogs.

I give George credit for reading garden blogs, and taking the time to respond. This is very important stuff. It will be watched by other executives to see where it leads. Some will say George is crazy to open himself up to this kind of interaction, yet for all the possible down sides I have to think that at least he is trying to get involved. He has made his point known, and now it’s up to the blogosphere to sort it out.

This is exactly what we have been asking for. To be heard by these large corporations, and have them respond! Now, at least you know that the President of Burpee is listening, whether you agree with him or not.

By the way, I learned about this through Twitter! Don’t let anyone tell you Twitter has no value.