The Blogging Nurseryman - The Art of Running a Small Garden Center or Nursery

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.

Love ‘em or not, sales representatives from wholesale nurseries or garden supply wholesale business are part of our industry. Good ones get to know the customer (me) and guide us to items we might have missed, or take care of problems before they escalate. The bad ones make you want to run and hide. In my career there was one sales rep for a wholesale nursery based out of Irvine, California who would make you cringe when he came through the door. He was caught up in the “used car” sales routine and would constantly ask why I didn’t want certain items and generally make you feel uncomfortable.. Thank goodness we don’t have any of those types that visit us anymore. The sales reps that visit us are good people, doing a good job. .

I think in the future just being good will not be enough. You will have to be “great.” A great sales person will learn what they can about their customer’s before calling on them the first time. Besides finding out about a potential customer through conversations with the former sales rep, if that’s possible, one way to learn more about a customer is check out their web page. It amazing what you can find out.

For instance if you check out our web page you will see we have a blog. You would also find out that we got hit by the cold from last week and suffered some damage. Now if I was a sales rep., and found out about this very important information I would sure as heck make sure my client knew that my company and myself were concerned. “What can we do to help?”. Not that I would expect any company but us to absorb the loss of the plants, it’s just nice to know that they sympathize and are keeping up with our nursery news.

The interesting thing is no one has said anything! They don’t know what happened because they haven’t done their research. When a representative from a major nursery co-op comes to my store to solicit our business, but admits she doesn’t know what a blog is, how anxious am I to get involved with this organization. All they have to do is look up our web page and learn. Checking out a companies web page on a regular basis should be done by every sales representative, especially before calling. If they haven’t, I would think twice about doing business with that organization.

The era of just being a order taker ended a while ago. Some haven’t gotten the message. No, I don’t need sales representatives calling on me more. I like the system we have in place right now. It’s just I think that if you want to be a successful sales representative, you need to learn about your clients and keep on learning. If your a business owner ask the sales representative next time they are in what they think of your web site, or a blog post you did earlier. Not finding out all you can about a potential client through the medium we are using for “getting the word out” shows a lack of understanding about the modern world of business. How anxious am I to get involved with a company like that?

Its hard to keep up anymore with the proliferation of gardening blogs and gardening social sites. Over at Garden Rant Susan introduces us to a new soicial site, at least to me. MyFolia comes to us from a couple of web developers/gardeners in England. Meanwhile Stuart has his excellent Blotanical from Australia, and of course Garden Web from the U.S. I know there must be more, and that’s a problem. I can’t keep up.

Of course the fact that I can’t keep up with all the gardening blogs, plus social sites is my own problem. These sites are put together nicely and serve a purpose. I get loads of visitors from Blotanical, for which I am thankful. I try to check into my plot now and then, but there is just so much time in the day.

Whats a person going to do?

Thats a real problem for those of us that are trying to get people to take notice of our web site, blog, or e-news, etc. I am starting to see more and more “bounces” (un-opened) results from our e-newsletter when its sent out. What’s interesting is these are people who signed up to receive it. Either they don”t recognize “Gecko Gab” when it arrives in their inbox, and delete it while deleting all the spam they get daily. Some have spam prevention in place that is preventing stuff they want to receive from getting to them. Most people don’t know how to tweak their anti-spam measures and as such some e-mail they would like is blocked.

I love the web. It’s my primary news gathering source as well as just being fun. Lately though I find myself not visiting as many sites as I would like. There is just so much news and so little time. This is a concern especially to those of us who use the web for our businesses. How do you get people to notice you when everyone is vying for the customers attention. One way I know not to try is what the local car dealers do when they try to be heard. They scream, jump up and down, entice with some “super sale”, wear funny costumes, and just generally annoy. Why do they think that works anymore?

Maybe if you are going to join a social network it should be just one. Sure you might miss someone if you don’t join the “other” one, but you can’t be everywhere at once. Once you start to spread yourself too thin, (I have tried) you don’t put the effort into any of them that’s necessary for positive results. Yes , Twitter is interesting, but thank goodness I have resisted so far.

What’s this mean to the small garden center with a web presence? How do you stand out amongst all the noise out there? I don’t know. I do know that after a quick once over of the web page I head right to the “About Us” section. After all a business is not just stuff to buy but people who hopefully care about my potential business. Who owns this business? Can I talk to them before I come to the store or do business with them? Will they answer my e-mail? The more the business owner or manager interacts with the customer, both in person and on the web the better. It’s still unusual for this to occur, so it’s a great chance for a small business “to stand out.”

If you tied to e-mail me lately you might have found a message “mail box full”. I ignored, this since I had sent messages read to the trash bin. Well apparently I needed to empty the trash bin! Thanks to those who took the time to call and let me know.

I try to monitor people who have linked to me, and return the favor by linking back to them via my blogroll. Its gotten hard to keep up these days, as there are so many new blogs out there! My only criteria for linking to another web site via my blogroll is a shared mutual interest. Mostly its garden related, but it could be just about anything. If you have linked to my blog and I missed it shoot me an e-mail and I’ll be sure to link back to you. Quality links are what makes the blog world go round!

Want to thank Zoey Farms who took the time to attend our Hyper-tufa pot making workshop. It was the first time they had visited and it was a result of our web page and blog. Yea, it works. Zoe farms is one of our growing community of vegetable farmers in the area. They have been around for a few years and sell their vegetables through a subscription service. We are seeing an increase in interest in growing your own vegetables as well as selling the excess or all of it at farmers markets or through a subscription service. I found out about them because they had linked to my site mentioning they were going to visit. I try to keep my eyes open for people talking about us. I have Google alerts set up for our names, business name, etc. When I saw their link I was able to visit with them before even meeting them in person. This is what all small business needs to do. You can start a blog for nothing but the time it takes to nurture it.

We in the blog world sometimes expect things to happen over night. That’s seems to be the nature of the world today. We want it now. Some things take time though and I believe that we have only started to see the effects of all this blogging. To those that said blogging was not something business needed to think about, your wrong! It empowers not only the customer, but connects businesses to the customer as well as other business. I find talking with other garden centers around the world empowering. Its amazing how small garden centers in all different places are facing the same concerns and possibilities. I find it comforting that a garden center in England has many of the same issues we have here. It means we are not alone, and through collaboration can come to solutions that benefit us both.

I hope I am right, but the era of small personalized business may be coming back. Right when we thought that the world was going to be dominated by mega-chains that crush the little guy, the little guy gets a voice! The really neat thing is that people are starting to listen and respond. I don’t need a huge percentage of the gardening public to shop our store. What I need is a smaller, more passionate group of people that will respond to our message and spread the word. When small business will really start to reap the rewards of keeping up the conversation is when the customer starts to spread the word. And when that customer has a blog of their own, look out!

Some posts just keep on giving. My post about Hines Nurseries being de-listed at the stock exchange was written on August of 2007. I just received a comment from Texastim, who apparently works at Hines. His comment is mostly directed at other commenter’s who might have worked at Hines in the past. What I found interesting is that it took someone at Hines this long to speak up. If you Google Hines Nurseries my blog post comes up right after Hines nurseries own web site.

His comment concludes with “hines is still going strong so someone was wrong. you people that have left hines need to quit being angry and actually reasearch more than one site before talking.”

The problem is there are no other sites to research, other than business sites that just list company info. There is no Hines blog where they can explain their side of the story. I get people searching for hines nursery blog and they end up at my site.

Does Hines have to blog? No. Should they have a blog? Yes, if they want to get their side of the story out. Do they need to get their side of the story out? After all I am just one potential customer with a blog and they are a multi-million dollar company.

Welcome to the new world. Ignore just one potential customer (in this case me) and the next thing you know they are writing about your business. Try Googling Home Depot tomatoes and see what comes up. The only reason I knew my site was coming up was people have used the search, home depot tomatoes in the past and ended up here.

I appreciate Texastim taking the time to address his concerns about my post and some of the comments. Companies will have to do more of this in the future. I find this great news. It allows the customer to have a say, good and bad about their experiences. If the company has done everything they can to address the customers concerns, then they will have nothing to fear from this new media. Instead use this media to express what the company stands for beyond a corporate web page. Let’s hear from more businesses!

Whats with the tree in the picture? Its an “Arkansas Black” Apple growing in my yard. I planted it about twenty years ago. Just thought it looked cool.