I’m working on the catalog for the website, and that makes me think about every single plant we grow. In any given year we have over 500 different varieties for sale in the nursery, and that’s a lot of plants. We can’t describe every single plant that we grow on our website, it would be a full time job. I try to cover the plants that we grow in large quantities, the plants that most people come here to find, and then when I have time I add some of the more unusual ones. This year I’ve been trying to figure out if this is helpful to you, our customers.
Like other small businesses, we get our fair share of trade magazines. Most of them don’t really have much that we can relate to–they’re slanted toward commercial greenhouses that cover acres, not square feet. They’re written for the people who grow ten thousand flats of marigolds or petunias, and that isn’t anything like our nursery. This week, though, I saw an article that seemed to relate to my catalog-writing dilemma, listing the ten biggest problems that gardeners have at garden centers. Number one: Picking the right plant.
For a minute that stumped me, because that doesn’t seem to be the question we get asked the most here at Perennial Favorites. Then I thought about how something like 70% of the plants sold every spring are sold in big box stores, and the complaint made more sense. If you’ve tried to get someone at Home Depot, or Walmart to answer a plant question, you know what I’m talking about. Faced with a parking lot full of plants, many shipped from Texas or California, how does the new gardener figure out what plant will work in their garden?
As soon as I finish updating the catalog, I’m going to post some new tabs on the website. Those of you who have shopped here are familiar with our plant lists that we post at the nursery–the Deer Resistant List, the Xeriscape List, and the High Altitude List, for example. Now I see that more collections of this sort could be really helpful. Some of my current ideas include the Grow Your Own Birdseed List, the Wild and Weird Vegetable Collection, the Too Beautiful to Live Without Flower Collection, the Driest of the Dry Plant Collection, The Beneficial Bug Collection, the All Native All the Time Collection…..you get the idea.
We’re here to help you find the perfect plant for your garden, but these lists could be a starting point, something you could check out before you get here. We hope it helps when planning your best garden ever this spring.
