Re: What to Plant When

**"* C* <d*@sympatico.ca>**

From: "Kathryn Marsh"
" Its been my experience that local garden centres are not the best place to 
ask about when to plant, or about what will grow locally. Some are great but 
many seem only too happy to succumb to temptation to sell too early so that 
the customer won't go and buy elsewhere."

Ah shoot, Kathryn, I can't let this go by.  I really want to change your 
positions of "some" and "many" in your post.

Simply put, it is bad business to practice bad business.

Good and proper garden centres are, indeed, amongst the best places to go. 
Perhaps in a larger urban centre where there might be a continuous supply of 
"new" customers, a less ethical shopkeeper might gull a hapless customer. 
But they'll only do that once a person. Eventually, you run out of 
customers.

This is not a sales pitch for my company; quite a few of our competitors, 
with the exception of number of years in business, can say the same thing. 
Consider this in defense of all the garden centres and nurseries, mostly 
family-owned, operated by good and trustworthy folk who are beginning to get 
a titch peeved at either being pilloried or lumped into a generalised 
category of "some."

The company for which I work is entering its 110th year. Our customer base, 
in general terms, live in CDN Zones 3a to 7b, so planting season can easily 
range over a month. We regularly tell folks not to plant when it is 
appropriate to do so. But, this is a bottom-line business. They are in our 
nursery and garden centre and we have the plants at hand; it can be silly 
not to complete the sale. If the customer is local, we have absolutely no 
hesitation in asking them to come back. We firmly believe that our 
combination of  selection, quality and expertise will survive a misguided 
consumer's visit to another nursery; they'll come back more convinced that 
we are the best option. (Again, our proper competitors- not the short season 
asphalt garden centres- will feel the same.) If they have driven a distance, 
we will sell them the plant but also give directions on how to care for it 
until the proper planting time rolls around. We also back up many of our 
shrubs and trees (more than 95% of our inventory) with a 3 year warranty. 
The plants we do sell without a warranty will thrive quite well given the 
proper site selection and care. We are experts in the plants we sell, in the 
environments available to the customer and, unfortunately, well aware of 
things that might happen to the plant after it leaves our property. We do 
our best to ensure happy smiles all round. If a plant is returned in a less 
than happy state due to, um, lets be charitable and call it ignorance, we 
will replace the plant under the premise that we did not provide the 
purchaser with the necessary knowledge. Once more, because this is very 
important to my trade, our competitors will do the same and not because we 
are in a "on the spot price matching" duel like you hear with box stores and 
auto dealers.

We track our customers; in fact we know them quite well. Repeat trade is the 
backbone of our business and we're not going to jeopardise that for a quick 
sale.  Joe and Susan Homeowner might not buy his plants from us this year, 
but next year they might...and the year after that..... And then so will 
their friends and  family members. Next year...and the year after 
that.....we'll still be here.

Ah, thanks Kathryn, that felt good.

On behalf of the "many",
Dan 

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