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Photo of the week

 

A beautiful winter basket from Churchill's, Exeter, N.H.

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Expect more Black Friday shoppers, poll says

More shoppers will hit stores this Black Friday than last year, according to Consumer Reports’ latest holiday shopping poll. More than a quarter (26%) of consumers plan to shop the day after Thanksgiving, up 5 percentage points from the 21% that shopped on Black Friday in 2007.

“Black Friday is the quintessential American shopping day,” said Tod Marks, senior project editor of Consumer Reports’ Tightwad Tod Blog. “And no matter how dismal the economy, you can count on the stores being filled to capacity. The big question this year, however, is how much consumers are going to cut back. Retailers are holding their collective breath and keeping their fingers crossed.”

-- Sarah

Management Clinic will tackle belt-tightening strategies

American Nursery & Landscape Association’s 2009 Management Clinic, Feb. 6-9 in Louisville, Ky., will address belt-tightening strategies and ways to grow new markets. In one session, consultant and Garden Center magazine columnist Ian Baldwin will lead retailers through a questionnaire to gauge the cost effectiveness of management strategies. Participants can also hear UK-based retail design consultant, Alistair Lorimer, speak about international trends and how they can be leveraged to grow revenue. Complete details about the clinic and registration details are available online.

-- Sarah

Plowing new ground

I recently received an e-missive about a new market for garden centers: horticultural therapy. According to Hank Bruce, a hort therapist, garden writer and consultant, the time is right for progressive garden centers to profit from a horticultural therapy mini-department as a part of their presentation.

“This would be a pathway to increased sales, particularly in the off seasons,” Bruce suggests. “It will bring new customers into the garden center and keep them coming back. It could also bring great free local publicity as this rapidly growing therapeutic field gains media recognition. The American Horticultural Therapy Association and its regional chapters provide a professional resource for our garden center customers who wish to use a professional in an ongoing basis or for consultation.”

Bruce and colleague Tomi Jill Folk market a number of garden center-specific publications and guides on the subject through Petals & Pages Press. “We can assist in developing a product line of special tools, books and videos to answer these community needs in a variety of HT venues, ranging from senior care to school gardening and community gardening programs,” Bruce says. “We are developing a series of short information sheets on various aspects of horticultural therapy for garden center customers. Some of these could even be posted on Web sites.”

For more information on the subject, contact Bruce or Folk at petals_pages@msn.com or  hungergrowaway@q.com.

-- Yale

Garden centers provide trees for troops

Garden centers across the country are participating in the Trees for Troops campaign this year. The program lets customers purchase a real Christmas tree to be donated to military families in the United States and overseas.

Donated trees will be loaded onto FedEx trucks on Trees for Troops Weekend, Dec. 5-7. Grandma’s Gardens & Landscape, Waynesville, Ohio; Snowy Pines Nursery, Greencastle, Ind.; and Williams Nursery, Westfield, N.J., are among this year’s participating retailers.

-- Sarah

Photo of the week

 

Gobble, gobble! This big guy--stuffed with SupaMoss instead of dressing!--comes from our friends at Enchanted Gardens and Enchanted Forest, Richmond, Texas.

Got a photo to share? Send it our way!

Defining encounters of 2010

Sid Raisch is president of Horticultural Advantage. Today we’re reprinting some timely commentary from him that appears on the ANLA Management Clinic blog. To get more details about the Clinic, click here.

When was the last time your company ventured out to encounter the future? Was it the 1980's? 1990's? Or earlier in the 2000's?

The aspects of horticulture where we provide do-it-for-me and finished products are clearly in the forefront while the majority and the core of our product line of the past 40 years—pansies, petunia, impatiens, geraniums, mums, poinsettia, and more have become commodities. New items have limited significance—about three years now. The margin boost from 4 ½” specialty annuals has evaporated. Increased sales of larger containers do not contribute all of the margin dollars of items they replace. New packaging and marketing consolidation under brand umbrellas such as Proven Winners, Simply Beautiful, Stepables, Plants That Work, etc. has provided sales and market share gains for smaller and regional growers. However, their retail partners continue to suffer erosion of transactions, margins, and profit.

We decide which course of action to take when we reach defining moments. One choice will be to continue pretty much as we have before. While this choice is more comfortable, it is also perhaps the most dangerous course. John F. Kennedy once said, "There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction." While our industry thrives on independence, history shows we have not been so free. We too often choose the comfort of doing what others are doing or what we've always done and sacrifice our future freedom in the process.

Consider these six defining encounters…

Read more from Sid on the ANLA Management Clinic’s blog.

Garden center slapped with 1,257% tax increase

Highland Nursery in St. Paul, Minn., is fighting an enormous property tax increase. The store’s taxes skyrocketed from $500 last year to $6,000 this year. Check out this report from KAALtv.com for more details.

I’ve visited this garden center twice and wrote about it in the January 2008 issue of Garden Center. (You can read about it here, here and here.) Owner Sue Hustings has done a great job creating gardener’s paradise in the middle of the city.

-- Sarah

New England Flower Show folds

New England Spring Flower Show will end its 137-year run, according to The Boston Globe. The 2009 show has been canceled, though its sponsors hope to stage two smaller events next year. Betsy Ridge Madsen, president of the board of trustees of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society told the paper that financial difficulties and the slowing economy forced them to call off the show, which in previous years attracted more than 100,000 people.

-- Sarah

Green industry associations exchange program access

American Nursery & Landscape Association (ANLA) has partnered with OFA and, in a surprise move, with Garden Centers of America (GCA) to exchange member pricing benefits for program in 2009.

OFA members can attend ANLA’s Management Clinic, Feb. 6-9, 2009, by paying the ANLA-member price. ANLA members can attend OFA Short Course, July 11-14, 2009 at OFA-member prices. Members of Garden Centers of America (GCA) can also attend Management Clinic at the ANLA-member price. In exchange, ANLA members can attend GCA’s 2009 Holiday Tour at GCA-member prices. GCA split off from ANLA in 2002 to form a separate association for garden centers, and ANLA created a new organization within its ranks to serve garden centers.

“With the challenging economic climate facing both our organizations’ members, this is an opportunity to provide the education they need to succeed in the year ahead,” said ANLA president Greg Schaan.

-- Carol