Chaos theory of a garden center spring

I was talking to Jim Crowell of Atlantic Garden Center in Virginia Beach, Va., yesterday (May 9) about how the rotten weather has hurt April and May sales for him and a lot of other East Coast garden centers. He said that it had been six days since he’d seen the sun and that ocean swells were 41 feet high.

What really caught my attention was what he has done to batten down. He stopped most plant orders over a month ago. He’s made sure he’s not overstaffed -- I’m not sure if he meant layoffs or simply not hiring his usual number of seasonal workers. And any expansion plans he might have had are on hold.

That is just one of thousands of garden centers with similar stories. If garden centers sales are down, so are garden center vendors’. If expansion plans are on hold, then a lot of local vendors are missing out. Add fewer employees, then you can see that local economies are hurt. Like the mythical swing of a butterfly’s wings that causes a hurricane, your garden center’s health affects a lot more than just you and your staff.

Years like the past few prove how important it is to find rainproof sales. Jim mentioned that Andersons, a garden center in a neighboring town, is doing relatively well due to the popularity of its café. Stauffers of Kissel Hill in Pennsylvania and Sickles Market in New Jersey both have grocery divisions, which bring in customers, who will buy gardening goods since they are already there to buy groceries. Jack Bigej of Al’s Garden Center in Oregon took a risk and built a huge garden center that is mostly under a greenhouse roof to counteract rain.

I’d like to hear how you are doing this spring. If you’re in an area with poor weather, have you cut your deliveries to almost nil? If you took out a loan to buy spring inventory, what kind of arrangements are you making with your bank?

And if you are doing well in a poor weather area, all of us really want to hear from you. What are you doing that makes the difference?

-- Carol