Carol Miller

Fresh from a busy spring season, retailers share their wish list of things growers can do to make spring generate even more sales.

Countryside Gardens in Hampton, VA, sent out one of the best marketing messages I’ve seen in a long time. In its June 2, 2016, e-newsletter, the first item read: Have you ever had a party to celebrate a plant blooming? If you have ever seen a night-blooming cereus in bloom, then you know why gardeners that have one of these plants will invite friends and neighbors over to enjoy them. What is so special about this plant that would make people venture out late in the evening to witness its blooms? Well, the blooms are as big as a saucer and 4 to 5 inches deep. Expect immaculate white petals, a wonderful OMG fragrance like none other. The plant blooms only once or twice a year. Yes, when a night-blooming cereus blooms, it is indeed a special event. Each plant can have several flowers blooming at once depending on its size. […]

Two years after a nearby gas explosion destroyed the store in Manhattan's Spanish Harlem, Urban Garden Center had a four-alarm fire that disrupted a popular train route, and the garden retailer is now dealing with an angry community.

Customers coming to your store this weekend expect long lines, crowded aisles, and other annoyances. If you step up and wow them this weekend with great service, you'll have a winning formula: low expectations + high traffic + amazing service = lots of new and repeat customers.

The consumer uprising against neonicotinoids has roiled the industry over the past couple of years. In June 2013, someone applied pesticide to a tree in full bloom, using the product in an off-label manner. That misapplication killed tens of thousands of bees, capturing the attention of activists. A short three years later, that activism has led to policy changes for big chains like The Home Depot and Lowe’s. Several cities and towns across the country have banned the sale of neonicotinoids, as has the state of Maryland. All of this made me curious. How was all the publicity affecting consumer attitudes at local garden stores? Traditionally, customers have shown little interest in how flowering plants are grown, other than they like the idea that they are from a local source. They have been much more particular about food plants than they have ornamentals. So I sent questions out to a […]

This past weekend, Bachman’s 2016 Spring Ideas House ended, marking the eighth year the Minneapolis-based regional garden store has invited the public in to see a former Bachman family home that now acts as a showcase for creative home and garden decorating. Three times a year, Bachman’s visual merchandisers strip the house, which once housed three generations of Bachmans, and repaint, replant, and redecorate it using items that can be purchased at the garden retail store. The team spends a year pulling together ideas, trends, colors, and so on, and transform the 1920s dwelling for each open house, drawing customers back again and again. Prior to the Ideas House, the management team worried about the long-term implications of having an aging customer base. They wanted to keep current customers happy, but knew they needed to attract younger customers. They tried several different marketing campaigns, and did not see a noticeable change. Then they […]

Every year, in the midst of the madness that is known as California Spring Trials (CAST), industry insiders debate how the event should be changed. Breeders, growers, reporters, and other attendees question if this is the most effective way to introduce new plants. Part of this debate is sparked by exhaustion, not to mention shock from the amount of money spent. For attendees, it’s almost a week of sprinting up or down the California coast, so you can make your appointed stops at various greenhouses, vineyards, and other breeder venues. The least fun parts of travelling are repeated over and over — packing up every morning and wrestling everyone’s luggage into the truck, and keeping alert during long drives. For breeders, it’s thousands and thousands of dollars spent on merchandising consultants, extra staff, prepping for weeks, then keeping everything looking amazing no matter the weather or the number of grabby attendees […]

Most garden retailers haven’t attended the industry’s arguably most spectacular event, California Spring Trials (CAST), where all the new and improved plants are put on dazzling display. The reason so few have had the chance to attend is there in the name: Spring. Generally speaking, the season is kicking off and all hands are needed in the store. Unless your a larger retailer, you simply can’t spare the time. So I thought I’d try to bring you a small taste of what a week attending the Spring Trials is like. CAST, the event’s acronym, is just shy of a week, running from Saturday through to Thursday. It’s not held in one location, but at various greenhouses, vineyards, and other venues. There’s no limit on the number of stops, and these locations generally fall between the two boundaries L.A. and San Francisco. Actually, until last year, the southern border is north of L.A. […]

When spring comes early, there’s generally a sense of joy, tamped down slightly by the dread that this is all the spring you’ll see. While you have no control over the weather, any smart business person can take steps to make the most of the early sales, while also guarding your finances in case the season actually does turn out to be short lived. Or, as garden industry consultant Sid Raisch says much more elegantly: “I always say that ‘A great season requires a long season,’ but there is more to the story. While an early spring could result in a great season, there are many ways it can still go bad beyond a surprise late snow storm. An early spring is an opportunity to a better spring, but not a right to one. Good luck happens when preparation meets opportunity.” In addition to Raisch, we also reached out to consultants Sid Raisch, […]

Last week, we examined how consumers’ search habits shine a light on the terms they’re using when it comes to gardening. This week, we continue that analysis. As a reminder, we use Google Trends to create the graphs used in this article. If you get the chance, spend some time on the site. You can plug in any phrase you’d like, and it will let you know how it has performed as a search term since 2004. It’s a type of consumer research that involves millions of people, something small business would never have access to normally. Despite this big positive, your research is limited to search terms. There’s no motivations, income levels, or other types of demographics to glean, save for the locations the searches originated from. Google Trends prefers to use big numbers for its graphs. That means it will return an error if you get too specific. For example, I […]

Younger garden consumers think it’s important for children to learn how to grow plants, even though they themselves see gardening as a time-consuming and expensive hobby, our latest research shows. This is based on consumer focus groups created by Michigan State University’s Bridget Behe and Greenhouse Grower RETAILING's Carol Miller to find out how they view their relationship with their yards and plants.

In fall 2015, Dr. Bridget Behe of Michigan State University and Greenhouse Grower RETAILING editor Carol Miller conducted three focus groups of consumers under 50 years old on behalf of Flower Canada. Here is an in depth report on the results.

Redenta's Garden Shops has two locations in the Dallas/Fort Worth metropolitan area. It has embraced its small size at both locations, finding ways to inspire customers while it keeps its inventory tight and easy to shop.

Lakeview Nurseries in Massachusetts thought they knew who their key customer group was. When they conducted this study, they learned that not only were they wrong, but the study helped them shore up some easy-to-fix problems they weren't aware existed.

The program gives the Connecticut-based garden retailer many benefits, from building costumer relationships to bringing in business earlier in spring.

We have an annual work rhythm that I think threatens to steal the joy we find in our industry. Our marathon run of extreme hours during the spring rush must stop.

It’s taken many years, but organic control sales are now on par with traditional controls for U.S. garden retailers, an analysis of a few years of surveying garden retailers shows. And retailers consistently report that organic controls have a higher increase in sales each year than its counterpart. The data was pulled from several years of our retail State of the Industry surveys, and the number of retailers responding each year ranged from 216 (in 2014) to 440 (in 2013) garden retailers. The national picture shows that a similar number of retailers are stocking traditional and organic pesticides. We find 78.3% of retailers are stocking traditional controls, which is just a whisper higher than the 77.93% that carry organics. But once you look at how the products are performing, you begin to see some differences. Take a look at the two charts below. The first, which tracks traditional pest control sales performance […]

Our favorite picks from Trendhunter.com's top 100 retail trends list offer garden retailers new ways to build loyalty with customers.

We take a close look at some of the bigger trends in 2016 through the lens of how garden retailers can use them to help their stores thrive.

There’s a great YouTube video that helps you grasp the size of our planets, the sun and other objects in the known universe. The video starts with a rotating moon filling the screen. You can see the curve of another rotating globe to the left edge. As the “camera” pulls back, you see Mercury, which looks like it’s double the size of the moon. This continues on through the planets in our solar system, then on to stars. Each newly revealed planet is considerably larger, making you realize how much Earth dominates Mars. The jump from Earth to Neptune is especially startling. It’s so much bigger. Same goes for Saturn in comparison to Jupiter. Then stars get thrown in, and it’s hard to keep the size of Earth — much less the moon and Mercury — in mind. Every business owner needs to think about the big picture on a regular basis. It’s important to see […]