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SHOPPING IN YOUR INDEPENDENT GARDEN CENTRE ✦ 2021 thoughts from Daniel “Chook” Fowler, Greenbourne Nursery
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’ll be honest with you all, this would be about the 10th or 11th edit to this article. At the beginning I didn’t really know what to write, however I knew what I had to write about. I could have gone down the easy road and written about what’s good to buy for Christmas or something sheepish like that. However, while I have calmed down by the 11th edit, I still felt compelled to share some advice when visiting these enchanted little centres of horticultural joy. The motive for the article arose over obviously a very stressful and unusual time in human history. Just as the world changed so did our clientele at Greenbourne Nursery. We went from servicing dominantly dedicated garden loving human beings to all of a sudden being inundated with panic stricken individuals who had all of a sudden discovered their gardens and hence the garden centres. Then, like birds following a flock, they seemly were lining up at our doors with random and sometimes demanding questions. We were to a degree caught a little off guard. Not off guard to the extra work, but off guard to the new type of client. Which again brings me to the paradox of this article, you see most people that read gardening articles are the people that were there before all this craziness and will always be our core clientele. Yet you have to hear me rant about all this. Well up to edit 9 it was all rant, however in my ultimate wisdom I have concluded two things, potentially all of our core clientele will read this, have a laugh and might pass it onto the odd person who is in the early stages of becoming gardening obsessed like the rest of us.
The other conclusion is that the odd, random garden rookie (yes it might be you), will see the word ‘shopping’ in the title and engage in the article looking for some sort of half price special. They then will be totally enthralled by my enigmatic writing and get caught up in my dream to re-educate the world for the better. If you’ve read up to here thank you, read on and enjoy a bit of fun, it is dedicated to the hardworking nursery person.
Come with a plan If you can, it is great. It seems at the moment we are getting a lot of people through the nursery who are a little ‘green’ when it comes to gardening. Which is great. Gardening is good for you. So, when I talk about “come with a plan”, I’m not referring to the plants
themselves, we can advise you on this, this is what we know. What we don’t know are the conditions of the areas you wish to plant out. This is the plan, the information we require. Let us know which way the garden bed faces, the soil type (bring in a sample), how much sun the spot gets, rainfall estimates etc. When you’re formulating your plan, give us the answers that we cannot possibly know. We can assess the conditions you have and then come up with some fantastic planting ideas for your areas.
Beware of the google search Haven’t internet search engines changed everything forever? We now have access to all the information in the world at the touch of a button. We can all diagnose our own worst case
