Once You’ve Reached Them, Teach Them!

by Kelly D. Norris

A recent conversation with a horticultural colleague got me to thinking about education at the nursery and garden center.  I often find myself after such thought provoking discourses with more questions than answers.  Are we doing enough education at the garden center?  Are we striving to only sell plants?  Should we be selling more than plants?  Should we be selling a generation of people on gardening and the pleasures that abound when engaged in such a humble avocation?  Selling plants isn’t easy and neither is teaching the people you’re selling them to about them.  Are customers there to buy plants or get an education?

I say both, whether they know it or not.  I say that once we’ve found a way to reach them, be it through colorful hanging baskets or an unusual selection of perennials, we should feel obliged to teach them.  As owners of these retail establishments, imparting our knowledge of plants and their culture should be nobly satisfying.  After all, wouldn’t you rather brood a feeling of “go out and do it, sport” than “Take this plant.  It will probably die.  Come back and buy another one.”?  The success, and ensuing celebration, at gardening is what drives customers back to the stores not the desire to replace ill-fated purchases from the year before.  If we send our clientele out with inspiration, enthusiasm, and security in what they are doing we have accomplished more at the end of the day towards the promotion of gardening than we would have if we’d simply just sold them a plant.  I know we’ve all killed plants but a beginning gardener might not shrug it off with such ease and in fact might feel discouraged by their false sense of ineptitude.

A case study could be had of the education issue by looking at all the native plants being introduced to the trade.  Native plant pollyannas, like myself, rejoice at such introductions.  “Finally, these cool plants will get some attention”, I’ve been known to say.  But with zeal appropriately contained, we should strive to find common ground with gardeners heedful of our horticultural laud.  While plants native to a given area certainly have the adaptive upper hand, establishing these plants, when you’ve first been able to find them, can be tricky, even frustrating.  And too often nurseries are quick to make the sale without offering insight into how to successfully cultivate said plants.  Poppy mallow (Callirhoe sp.) is a fitting example, especially since it has received some column space in the national press of late.  Once established this rugged, debonair native blooms for months and is the best groundcover for hot, sunny areas.  It does so by arising from a perseverant taproot.  This parsnip-like storage structure tends to abhor pot culture though making it difficult to cultivate in a nursery setting.  Recently though, when at the nursery, I see poppy mallow being sold without even so much as a warning that these plants may be slow to take off while their taproot recovers from transplant.  I’m worried that without offering guidance as to the needs of particular plants, especially those that have fought the battle of obscurity, we lose out when it comes to cultivating new ideas in the minds of avant gardeners.

And yes, I’m also saying that our marketing efforts should match our efforts, and habits, on the sales bench.  It certainly behooves our marketing efforts if we offer information to our customers about how to cultivate plants beyond design inclined statements, playfully known as point-of-purchase, like “Loves full sun” or “Thrives in dry shade”.  Our promotion of new plants is undermined if we do not educate the public on the needs of those plants in the garden.  Suburban Garden, USA, though maybe within the ecological range of poppy mallow, is a heck of a lot different than the dry prairie from whence it came.

We are of a foolish notion to think that all plants will do well in all places.  The botanical biodiversity present on this planet is testament this.  A genus of plants may hold one species or several hundred, the prodigiousness of a particular genus evidenced when the number of species tallies into the latter.  So selling a plant not adapted to your area might verge on egregious, if not foolish.  We’ll talk more about properly educating customers on hardiness and adaptability next month.  After all, we’re here to set them on a path to success via quality plants and quality information. GG

Kelly D. Norris is Farm Manager at Rainbow Iris Farm and, when not in the garden, can be found roaming the greenhouses of Horticulture Hall at Iowa State University.  Check out his blog, the E-Garden Almanac, at his website www.kellydnorris.com .