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Gather ‘round the Halloween tree

Trees are the perfect accent for every holiday season it seems. Treetopia unveiled its new Black Tiger Tree earlier this year. The solid-black artificial tree is pre-lit with bright orange lights. According to Treetopia, the spooky design is perfect for eclectic homes or pumpkin patches.

-- Sarah

Holiday trends light up the season

Halloween is almost behind us, which means the Christmas sales season will be starting in earnest. I recently had a conversation with Ingrid Liss, vice president of design for Midwest. She offered some insight on how consumers will be decking the halls this holiday season.

Glitter, shimmer and crystal. The highly jeweled look will be big this year, Liss said. There is also demand for “Christmas glitz,” characterized by lime green and bouncy red accents.

Text- and message-driven items. “Ornaments that say something are gaining a lot of speed,” she said. Simple words like “magic,” “wish” and “joy” presented in an attractive typeface attract consumers.

Stars and crowns. Liss said they’ve used this motif to give a regal look to some items in their collection. Traditional lucky charm symbols are also making an appearance, creating a fun, lighthearted theme.

Vintage-look pieces. Artisan-inspired accents are also gaining ground. Liss said items with appliqué, stitching and beadwork are more popular. A handcrafted look with a modern feel should definitely attract customers.

Rich reds. Collections that focus on red are in vogue, Liss said. Accents in shades of red, magenta and fuchsia offer a rich, indulgent look.

Black and white. This classic combo has staying power, according to Liss. Midwest offers tons of white ornaments that can be paired with carefully chosen black accents.

-- Sarah

California wildfires cause extensive damage to plants, flowers

The San Diego Union-Tribune reported widespread damage to the county's ornamental plant growers. Read the full story here.

**Update 10/30/07, 10:24 CST** We just received word from Sharon Gravitt - Warschauer with EuroAmerican Propagators that the facility came through the wildfires unscathed. "This 'near miss' is something that all employees, customers,  and friends of EuroAmerican and other area businesses and residences are all hugely thankful for," she said. The company is resuming business as usual.

-- Sarah

Wal-Mart scales back spending again

Wal-Mart lowered its spending forecast for the current fiscal year and expects to spend even less building new stores over the next 2 years, The New York Times reported.

Spending for the current fiscal year should range from $14.7 billion to $15.4 billion. In June, Wal-Mart gave a $15.5 billion forecast, lowered from an original annual budget of $17 billion. The company’s current plans include shifting capital into overseas expansion.

-- Sarah

Customers are no longer kings

Jyme Mariani is managing editor of Garden Center Magazine and group editor--grower for Nursery Management & Production and GMPro.

While in high school and college, I worked in one of the most customer-service-intensive and thankless industries: food service. I worked in cheap dives, ice cream stores, Italian restaurants and -- for a seven-year stint -- at one of the country’s largest amusement park chains.

These experiences taught me a lot and drilled the “Guest Is Always Right” rule into my head. (Yes, customers were “guests” that were to be welcomed into our “home” to spend an insane amount of money.)

Thanks to this intensive training, I usually bristle when I witness or read about bad customer service. Sometimes though, my initial instinct is a little off base.

Amazing, horrifying and true!
I recently read an interesting article in Zagat Buzz (brought to you by those fascinating people who publish the regional dining guides). It made customer service sound not only dead, but stuffed, mounted and placed in a natural history museum.

In the article “Would You Like a Side of Attitude With Those Fries, Sir?” staff editor Randi Gollin details restaurants from across the country that have a downright anti-customer policy. My favorite was The Vortex Bar and Grill’s menu. This Atlanta restaurant has a section on its Web site entitled, “Stuff You Should Know.” Here’s an excerpt:

SPECIAL ORDERS AND EXTRAS
The Vortex is a true short-order kitchen and we will always try to prepare special orders whenever possible. If you order something that is not on the menu and we do make it for you, we will charge you whatever damn price we want to and you will thank us for it. If you request extra stuff, that’s no problem, but you will be charged for it. Hey, we don’t get any of this stuff for free you know. Requested deletions will not reduce the price of any menu item, tightwad.

Are we too white?

Our industry is overwhelmingly a white, middle class one. Is that because only white, middle class Americans are interested in gardening? I doubt it.

My guess is that ethnic groups in your community see only whites in charge of garden centers, and only whites shopping there, and decide to not risk possible hostility and shop instead at more pluralistic places like Home Depot and Wal-Mart.

We whites don’t think about how off putting we can be en masse.

For a couple years in college, I roomed with Kim, who is black. We had a lot in common -- wide ranging interests, laid back attitudes, and most essential for successful roommate pairings, the same cleanliness level. In our case, we were picky about the bathroom and kitchen, and didn’t much care about the rest of the place.

I grew up in a town where the population was pretty evenly split between blacks and whites, and we all mixed together in the schools. I thought I knew black culture pretty well. I found out pretty quickly I understood very little of the black experience in Texas.

For the first time, I saw the constant, small slights handed out as Kim and I went about shopping, eating out and joining friends at the park. And I learned all kinds of inconsequential things, like how different Kim’s hair care regimen was from mine.

The funny thing is, Kim didn’t really learn anything new about whites from me. My culture rules the airwaves. How we groom, what images we identify with and so on are out there for everyone to see.

That was when I began to understand how isolated minority groups can feel.

Now, put that together with how homogenous our customers are, and I began to wonder, what would happen if garden retailers made an effort to reach more of their community than just those who are like themselves.

California wildfires threaten growers

Fires in Southern California threatened the state’s nursery industry, the Los Angeles Times reported. Wildfires passed through agricultural areas in San Diego, and officials worried that the county's avocados, citrus, nursery stock, flower crops and vineyards suffered damage.

San Diego produces about $1.4 billion of crops annually, including nearly $1 billion of flowers, trees, shrubs and bedding plants, as well as more than $100 million of avocados. On Wednesday, mandatory evacuation orders were issued for Bonsall, Calif., home of EuroAmerican Propagators -- the largest supplier of Proven Winners liners and 4-inch finished plants.

Ron Vanderhoff, nursery manager for Roger’s Gardens, a retailer in Corona del Mar, Calif., said his store has escaped damage so far. Wholesale grower El Modeno Gardens in Irvine, Calif., lost several outbuildings to the fire, the local ABC affiliate reported.

-- Sarah

Paper or plastic? …

This is interesting/frightening to those of us in the print media: If you go to Google.com and type, “decline in newspaper sales,” you’ll get 1.8 million virtual thoughts on the subject, give or take a few. Almost all of them seem to suggest that while educators can debate ad nauseam over whether Johnny can read, they would probably have to reach a consensus that he isn’t reading printed news.

This hurts me on many levels. Foremost, I might have to say, “ahem, I was wrong,” and I never like to do anything that beings with “ahem,” much less anything that ends with “I was wrong.” Throughout my adulthood, I have declared that as long as there is a men’s room there would be newspapers, but now I’m beginning to wonder. Today’s 30-somethings turn to the computer for news. The generation behind them will turn to the phone for same. Arithmetic never was my strong suit, but even I can do the math here: The printed word could fast become an endangered species.

While this development certainly affects my livelihood, it probably has an impact on your business, as well. If you’ve grown accustomed to communicating with your customers via the newsletter, you might want to start considering a Plan B. And Plan B almost certainly won’t have anything to do with ink and paper. I would take a look at all the e-letters you receive — and then pare them down to the ones you like. And then pick the one you like BEST.

Odds are, that’s the route you’ll ultimately want to take.

Of course, given the second paragraph of this missive, I might not be the best in the world at laying odds.

-- Yale

USDA touts ‘power trees’

Scientists at the U.S. National Arboretum have spent the last 4 years studying trees that can stand up to the rigors of urban environments. The Power Trees Project identified cultivars that exhibited pest resistance and tolerance for environmental extremes. Trees that made the cut include Ulmus ‘Frontier,’ Prunus ‘Dream Catcher’ and Lagerstroemia ‘Natchez.’

-- Sarah

Society warns against using invasives as decorations

Consumers are being advised against using invasive plant species in their holiday decorations. Tom Smarr, director of hort. at New England Wild Flower Society, said the public should avoid Oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus) and multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora) in holiday decorations.

“Too often birds carry the fruits right off wreaths and garlands, or the fruits end up in landfills where they resprout,” Smarr said. “These plants create severe environmental damage in many parts of the country. They invade open fields, forests, wetlands, meadows and even your own backyard, aggressively killing off whatever plants are nearby. Bittersweet can even kill mature trees.”

It is illegal to sell bittersweet and multiflora rose in any form (plants or prunings) in Massachusetts.

-- Kevin