“When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not. “
Oriental Poppies
1928
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Perennials
“You are never really a gardener until you put that first perennial in the ground”
Nick Hudson
from his notebook
Nothing mystifies a homeowner more than a trip to the perennial benches of a garden store. What the heck are these plants?
Most garden store employees just do not know how to sell them. They are not sexy like their cousins, the annuals. Perennials end up languishing and isolated in some back corner of the lot, growing out of their socks in little pots. They soon turn yellow and scraggly.
Owners hire plant snobs to sell the things, old hippies and granolas, who give tours of their favorite babies instead of selling them. The perennial department becomes some sort of little cult den where the uninvited are not invited.
Some owners put up signs to explain what these plants are all about. But, often the message never gets through. So, they get marked down or dumped at the end of the season.
Why sell these plants if they are just a lot of trouble?
We believe that a full selection of perennials is another of those anchors in a garden store that keeps gardeners returning year after year, passing by other plant stores just to get to us each spring. More importantly, they make us a lot of money! The square footage return on the space investment dedicated to perennials is enormous.
Where is the main perennial section located in green garden gates?
The perennial area is located in yellow. We use the open benches in the courtyard as well as the adjacent walkway display area for the display.
Of course, we use displays all through the store for special blooming perennials. Back stock is moved from the receiving and storage area daily and hourly as conditions dictate.
How about the perennial area employees?
Out go the plant snobs and the “master gardeners”. We want young employees, young homeowners who not only have the knowledge base about the plants, but can relate to newer generations of gardeners. They know how to sell, they know how to display, they know how to get those plants in the hands of the customer.
Empower the Plant Manager
"The most critical part of any new plant area management policy s ensuring that the plant area manager has the vision and know how to grow sales. Today’s plant manager needs a lot more skills than those of a decade ago. They need to have retail skills, be aware of trends, and be plant care technician and have knowledge of plants and to be able to sell them and understand the consumer’s perspective. Over the years we have lost a lot of the plant knowledge we had in the plant area and a knowledgeable team can increase the average sale per customer considerably."
From “New Ideas for Garden Retailers”
How do you make these plants "sexy". How do you promote perennials?
First we bring them out of the darkness and the hidden corners, near the action of the garden store. We also mix some perennials with other plants and products rather than keep them all in one bunch.
Our signing is colorful and alive, wild and crazy and vibrant looking, rather than just a lot of technical stuff that customers ignore. Our goal is to get them to try just a few perennials and they will be hooked. We partner a lot with non profits groups in the perennial area. For example, for each purchase of a particular perennial variety, part of the sale is donated to a local charity or cause in the community.
We give away perennials to our customers who are purchasing large amounts of plants for their homes. We feature perennials in bloom in several high traffic areas with huge core board photos of the plants. We emphasize in our promotions that it is easy to grow perennials, that the plants save the gardener lots of money each season, and perennials are “green”, sustainable, reusable, and recyclable!
We follow closely the promotions of the national perennials societies and display the “Perennial Plant of the Year with a special display with all the winners over the last ten years. We grow large numbers of the current winner in smaller plots and give them away to our perennial customers each season. We display perennials in areas of the store as well as special perennials such “Hosta of the year” and “Iris of the Year”.
As in the promotion of all of our plants and products, we bring in members of the local perennial clubs to promote their group as well as answer questions and give instructions to our customers on selected busy garden store days.
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Roses
“As you walk down the fairway of life you must smell the roses,
for you only get to play one round”.
Ben Hogan
Great garden store owners understand that customers rely on their decisions about the right plants and products for their homes. The selection of roses for the garden store is the best example of this attentiveness to quality and varieties.
A rose plant is a huge investment of time and effort. Ahead is a lot of digging, pruning, spraying, and watering. There must be big rewards for the customer in hardiness, disease resistance, bloom quality, foliage quality and color. A wonderful rose selection in a garden store truly symbolizes a commitment to the gardener.
Tell me about your varieties in your rose selection at green garden gates?
We offer all of the modern classes of roses; Hybrid Teas, Grandifloras, Miniatures, Climbers and Floribundas. Depending on the geography, we also include some hardier or more adaptable groups that will do will in harsh or unusual conditions like the Explorer series or carpet roses. We also have a selection of Antique Roses, tried and true varieties from early rose growing history.
More than that however, we pay close attention to offer the varieties of roses that have, over many years, been the top rated overall and that have a high rose society score. The following is a group of these outstanding roses.
We do offer the newer varieties also, the “roses of the year” or heavily advertised new varieties, but our emphasis is offering roses that will be consistently successful.
How do you offer your selection, bareroot, in containers?
We just do not do bareroot roses at all in our retail stores. As in other plant products, the weather time window generally, is too close from offering bareroot to the need for all the plants to be in pots. The same holds for roses in bags or cardboard “redi-plant” boxes. (We do not believe that red-plant boxes are suitable for planting box and all). All of our own production roses are potted in 5 gallon pots, with the exception of miniatures, which are done in 3 gallon pots. We do purchases for sale a selection of blooming roses pre-potted from high quality rose growers during the height of the season for instant bloom color during the special times of Mothers Days and other occasions.
What grade of roses do you purchase?
We stick with only #1 grade plants. Rarely, will we buy #1 ½ grade if the supply is severely limited. All the other grades are just too awful and embarrassing to sell!
What is the process for getting the roses ready to sell?
The roses for our production are ordered bareroot. They arrive in large cardboard boxes and with a plastic liner, moist and generally with growth on the plants. We stack the boxes in our cooling house until we are ready to pot, which is no more than two days from arrival.
The rose buses are dropped in tied bundles of ten into large galvanized cattle water tubs. We add a solution of a root stimulant called “Superthrive” and let the bundles soak in this treated water, while we are potting. We prune all canes of each rose bush to about 8 inches and remove any broken canes. We re-cut the major roots. (In some geographic areas, Cane borer insects are a problem, so we coat the tops of each can cut with a pruning sealer to prevent insect entry.)
The plants are then potted into the five gallon cans, labeled, watered, fertilized and placed into position in the display area.
Do you protect these newly potted roses from the weather?
We do not. We have found that these plants do best right out in the sun and the harsh elements of the springtime, uncovered and unprotected. It has been our experience that freezing and thawing has no effect on the plants. In fact, they grow better and faster just sitting out in the weather. Any freeze damage from growth that has happened in storage and transport of the grower is replaced quickly by new growth, much better and more durable.
Tell us about fertilizing, insect and disease, and grooming maintenance?
We fertilize with a three month time release commercial growers granular fertilizer immediately and follow up with foliar fed liquid fertilizers once every thirty days. For insect control, we use Ortho systemic liquid insect Control every two to three weeks dousing the plants in an early morning application. For black spot, mildew and rust, we use a product that has the active liquid ingredient called Triforene, found in the product, Ortho Rose Disease Control. We douse the plants in an early morning application every two weeks alternating with the insect control application. Our roses are just clean and healthy all through the season!
Nothing can look worse than a bloomed out rose bush with dead flowers! We assign our carry out employees to remove the blooms and any dead portions of the plant each day. The roses are always fresh and appealing to our customers.
Do you have rose promotions at green garden gates?
Yes. We have some fun with roses. The trick is to get our customers to commit to a rose garden. They have heard so many horror stories about the difficulty with roses in the landscape. We have local rose clubs at the store often to direct and guide our customers. We do a fun promotion called “real men do roses!” when we target men to become interested in rose growing. We have a special for them and all others with special pricing for a dozen rose bushes for their new garden. We also have a five rose special that has significant cost savings.
Where is the rose area located on the site?
Our courtyard is the home for our selection of roses. We also utilize the adjacent walkway area. There are a lot of varieties so space is needed both in the display as well as the backstock area in the receiving corridor.
