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plant displays

By Tim Wood  All rights reserved ©  Spring Meadow Nursery, Inc.

Customers don't shop for products; they shop for solutions. That's why many progressive retailers display their products in combinations that show customers how to use them. Displaying inspirational plant combinations in your garden center can do more than just show off your products. It provides your customers with useful solutions they can buy and apply.  Simply put, it  helps your customer realize her dream garden and that helps you sell more plants.  

Clothing retailers are experts at combining their products in beautiful and useful displays.  These displays show us how to use their products by coordinating complete outfits, right down to the socks,  shoes and jewelry. Window displays, mannequins and table displays are designed to help the most fashioned impaired customer pull together a beautiful wardrobe. Yet plant retailers have been slow to catch on. Garden centers often overlook the necessity of display gardens, end-caps and the power of plant combinations.  Plant stock is jammed into stores with little thought given to aesthetic design or marketing potential. Plants are segregated into groups such as trees, shrubs, perennials and ground covers and to further intimidate the customer, they're arranged in alphabetic order by scientific name. This type of system may work in a warehouse store, but in most retail settings it's a disservice to the customer and retailer alike. Plant shopping should be a fun experience, but for many people it generates more anxiety than shopping for a new computer.  

Bridgett Behe, Michigan State University horticulture-marketing expert, reminds us to "sell gardens, not plants!"  Product displays, end-caps and even the stock layout should all be designed with this in mind. Displays inspire, motivate and take the mystery out of garden design. They should make plant shopping a fun and enjoyable experience. Displaying plant combinations have the added benefit of creating multiple sales opportunities that might have otherwise been lost.  Why not stock nasturtium seeds next to the one gallon lambs ears? What could be better then helping your customers realize their dreams, while at the same making an additional sale.

Creating interesting and profitable plant combination displays is easy.  Landscape and garden designers create beautiful landscapes and gardens by contrasting plant features. The same concept can be used to create store displays.  Combine and contrast plants with different foliage colors. The rich burgundy-purple foliage of Weigela Wine & Roses is even more dramatic when it's displayed against the bright yellow foliage of Weigela 'Rubidor.  Contrast foliage texture to create pleasing combinations. The fine texture of Japanese Spiraea and the narrow strap-like foliage of fountain grass creates an interesting combination because of the contrast in foliage texture. Contrast plant habits or shapes to produce beautiful combinations. Display a pyramidal shaped plant with an arching plant, or a mounded plant with an upright plant. When plants are in bloom, contrast flower colors and contrast bloom shapes. The brightly colored, star-like flowers of clematis are even more spectacular when mingled in with the large creamy-white plumbs of Ural false spirea (Sorbaria sorbifolia).  Your customers will appreciate the beauty in these simple combinations, and want to recreate the same effect in their own garden.

Bust out of the paradigm that says different plant types should be segregated to opposite ends of the store. Show your customers how to mix annuals with perennials (photo), and perennials with shrubs.  After all, beautiful gardens are created by combining plants that look great together, and not by combining plants based on their life cycle or based on the presence or absence of woody stems.

  To fully capitalize on the benefits of combination displays, garden center owners and store managers need to make plant combinations a store priority. The spirit should be carried through and experienced by all, from the display artist right down the check out clerk. All employees should be trained, prepped and ready to recommend useful plant combinations. When designing your displays use the collective imagination of your staff.  The more ideas the better. Their involvement will only help them make better customer recommendations. You might be surprised with the ideas they come up.  If you have a landscape designer on staff, utilize their talents as well. Look in garden design magazines for ideas and inspiration. Consider plant combinations when ordering your plant stock and think about combinations each day as you walk through your store.  In all you do, remember that shoppers are looking to buy solutions, not products and that we sell gardens, and not just plants. The plant combination displays in your store will help your customers realize their dream of a beautiful yard, and help you sell more plants too. That is the power of plant combinations.