Quiet Prestige
June 18, 2008 
In 1939, William Harris and Jane Grant bought a country estate in Litchfield, Conn., where they aspired to get away from the hustle and bustle of New York City. Both writers–he for Fortune magazine and she for The New York Times–they wanted a quiet place to write, but quickly found the draw of Mother Nature often lured them from their desks.
Harris and Grant, a married couple who affectionately called each other by their last names, plunged into gardening with the natural curiosity of journalists. Quickly exhausting the resources of their local advisors and suppliers, they took their search for knowledge to the Big Apple with interest in new plants, original garden design and modern cultural practices.
From their beginning as novice gardeners in a private garden, they grew a business based on “the principle that good plants and good service will, if presented clearly and accurately, always have an audience among knowledgeable gardeners,” according to writings by Harris under the pen name Amos Pettingill. In the ’40s, Pettingill wrote in “The White Flower Farm Garden Book,” he had “found only a few mail-order nurseries that produced quality plants true to variety.”
He wrote that a seller’s market was developing for garden plants and by establishing a mail-order nursery “with complete integrity, we could attract experienced home gardeners, many of them with horticultural knowledge professionals could envy–the top of the market, in other words.” White Flower Farm remained small as the floriculture industry began to boom, serving a number of devoted, ardent horticulturists searching for the best of the new and unusual plants. The operation made it its mission to find and offer those plants to customers.
Grant passed away in 1973 and Harris sold the nursery to its current owner, Eliot Wadsworth, three years later. Harris died in 1981 and in his honor, Wadsworth made Amos Pettingill live on through his own writing about the activities at White Flower Farm.
Modern Mail-Order
White Flower Farm is unique today as one of the only successful mail-order nurseries in the United States, with a direct-to-customer base that spans throughout the Northeast. With 90,000 square feet of greenhouses in Litchfield and a fulfillment center in nearby Torrington, the operation employs 60 year-round employees and another 100 seasonal employees. Key managers include Barbara Pierson, nursery manager; Rob Storm, product development manager; Michelle Tranquillo and Donna Cataldo, fulfillment managers.
The operation launched its Web site (www.whiteflowerfarm.com) in 1999, as an addition to three, high-gloss, four-color catalogs distributed for the spring, fall and holiday seasons. More than 60 percent of White Flower Farm’s orders are now generated online, but the operation hasn’t found it can do without its printed catalog, says President Lorraine Calder. While the operation’s prices may be slightly higher than those found at independent garden centers, Calder says she has to offset costly printing, shipping and energy prices somehow, and customers gladly pay for the quality plants and service they receive.
“It’s the cost of running a mail order business,” she says. “It’s very expensive to put 148 color, glossy pages in the mail, so we charge the prices we need to cover the cost of doing business in that method. They’re paying for the fact that we’re here and we’ll stand behind it. That’s worth doing.”
Asked whether customers feel buying plants from White Flower Farm is a status symbol of sorts, Calder says certainly some customers may feel that way due to the property’s history and acres of display gardens.
“I think the fact that we show people how to use plants and have been doing it for so long and do it ourselves may help,” she says. “You come to this property and see all the gardens and see the plants in use, and I guess there is some prestige along with it. I hope that it’s not a barrier to new gardeners, though. We’re here to help whenever they have trouble. If it doesn’t go well for them, we’re here to advise and help them try again.”
A great deal of work goes into preplanning of production and catalog printing, with the operation working a year or more in advance of each season. The book goes out in January for spring, June for fall and October for the holidays, and customers can begin ordering as soon as they receive it.
“My friend Barbara Pierson would say you don’t know soon enough what you want in that book,” Calder says. “The spring ’08 list is decided on and we’ll start on fall ’08 in two weeks. Holiday is just about done and will head to the printer in mid-August.”
Meanwhile, the operation’s monthly e-newsletters, often written under the Amos Pettingill pen name, drive advance click-through sales from a good majority of its 300,000 subscribers, especially when the icon waxes poetic about popular items like ‘The Works’ daffodil bulb mix, Calder says.
“When it’s high gardening season, we talk to people twice a week via commerce e-mails; once a month, one of those gets bumped and Amos Pettingill writes a thing or two. Our customers enjoy reading what he has to say and may make a purchase as a side note.”
Building On What Works
White Flower Farm’s sales have grown over time, but currently, the business is working to maintain with seasonal variances and new plant offerings, Calder says. Its on-site garden store, open April through October, offers visitors a place to pick up souvenir plants and is quite busy in spring. The operation sells a variety of hardgoods and high-end gifts in the store and online, as well.
Areas of growth include its now three-year-old garden center partners program, which includes 100 independent garden centers this year. Mark Sellew of Pride’s Corner Farm approached the operation with the idea, and currently works with White Flower Farm to select partners. The program started with 20 and will expand, though not at such a fast rate. Most partners are located in New England, while others are in the Midwest. Having both mail-order and retail distribution points takes some of the guesswork of plant availability out of the equation for eager gardeners, Calder says.
“We try to tell people, ‘Why take a chance? If you read about it and want it, then go to WhiteFlowerFarm.com and get your order in, and then you don’t have to hassle with wondering,'” she says. “But then there is that first warm day when the instincts get going and you want to get to it. There is something fun about going to garden centers, absolutely. I’m an addict–I participate.”
Calder has developed marketing partnerships with breeders to sell unique plants and create anticipation for their release. An alliance with publisher Meredith Corp. also provides plants for garden promotions, reinforcing the White Flower Farm brand.
“For an offer like echinacea ‘Tiki Torch,’ Graham Rice wrote about it in April and said we would have it for fall, so I put that up on the Web site as soon as he wrote about it and in fact sold plants,” Calder says. “We put sambucus ‘Black Lace’ up early for Spring Meadow Nursery because they wanted to have people writing about it at holiday time as ‘Black Lace,’ the perfect gift. Sure enough, people came to the Web site and bought it.”
So what’s next for White Flower Farm? More of the same, Calder says. “Quality plants and service is our bible and that’s not going to change,” she says. “Whether it’s echinacea this year or the next five and then baptisia, we just try to find the best within those new products and get them out to the consumer. So good gardening information, good quality plants; that’s what we’re going to continue to do.”
Subscribe to eNewsletter
