Open Register

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

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.

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
 

Industry associations launch careers Web site

The American Nursery & Landscape Association, the Professional Landcare Network, the American Society for Horticultural Science and 28 state green-industry associations have launched a new Web site, www.thelandlovers.org, to promote green industry careers to junior high and high school students. The site offers an overview of many career options, including arboriculture, garden retail, landscape installation, as well as nursery and greenhouse production.

-- Sarah

Adding some green to Big Red

How do you show the relevance of a university hort department that is typically seen as out of date and “just for farm kids”? You go green, of course.

That’s what marketing communications agency Swanson Russell Associates did as part of a collaboration with University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Department of Agronomy and Horticulture.

The department isn’t part of the main city campus at UNL, so the program remained a bit of a mystery to students on the main campus. (This despite Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee’s matriculation in a plant i.d. class as part of the ill-advised NBC reality series “Tommy Lee Goes to College” a couple of years back.)

SRA, working pro bono, formed a team with department head Mark Lagrimini to develop a communications plan for a department that went unnoticed and underappreciated.

The results are progressive, team-spirited and vibrant. With “GO GREEN” as the overarching theme, the team created posters, T-shirts, backpack tags, canvas book bags, bookmarks, Web graphics and lots more.

“Our main office is in Lincoln, as is the UNL Agronomy and Horticulture Department,” explained Jim Matya, v.p./account supervisor at the agency. “It made sense for us to join together and form this relationship.”

With a clean, contemporary design and a vibrant color palette, the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, led by the Big Red Green Team, now is being seen for what it is – an academic leader, environmental steward and a force on the campus and in the community.

-- Kevin