“Cead Mile Failte romhaibh go leir” (“A thousand welcomes to each one of you!” in the Irish language) was a greeting we heard many times throughout the week at the International Garden Center Association (IGCA) Congress in Ireland last August. And feel welcomed we did. For five days, more than 200 delegates from all over the world toured Irish garden centers, botanic gardens, wholesale growers, castles, historic areas in Dublin and ate some of the finest Irish food around. We even had dinner with the president of Ireland himself, Michael D. Higgins.

Over the next few pages, we share some of the sights and ideas that stood out the most from this year’s congress. Stay tuned for a more in-depth feature on Arboretum Garden Centre, recent winner of the Retail Excellence Ireland Award for National Store of the Year (greater than 10,000 sq. ft.), in an upcoming issue.
 

Thinking both inside and outside the box

Among the display ideas that stood out from the crowd, the use of crates and shadowboxes caught attendees’ attention at Garden House Garden Centre. They were used to create mini inspirational displays above the more traditional rows of products, some of which were featured in the mini display. We also saw some great displays showing how customers might incorporate different products into their own homes at Cois na hAbhann Garden Centre.
 

I saw the sign

Expanding outside of the traditional signage, the Irish retailers we visited created signs that were interesting, eye-catching and sometimes comical. From chalk to plastic banners, the materials didn’t seem to matter as much as the content. Johnstown Garden Centre’s signs were informative and written in clear language that would inspire, instead of intimidate, novice gardeners. Their use of black backgrounds made signs stand out. Newlands Garden Centre and Arboretum Garden Centre both had entertaining sayings and puns on theirs.
 

Don't forget the furry (and not-so-furry) friends

Pet departments were more prevalent in Ireland than in most U.S. garden centers we’ve seen, further contributing to the idea that a garden center is becoming more of a lifestyle store than just a place that sells plants. All of the garden centers that we visited were diversified with regards to their products and services. Orchard Home & Garden had a full pet department and even a small petting zoo for customers.
 

Cook it and they will come

In Ireland, as in much of Europe, visiting the garden center isn’t just about buying plants. Some stores make a good portion of their revenue at an on-site café. Arboretum Garden Centre reported that 28 percent of their total revenue was earned at theirs, named Rachel’s Garden Café after the owner and current president of the IGCA, Rachel Doyle. And after delegates were served a delicious dinner and Irish coffee at Rachel’s Garden Café, it was easy to see how they reached such numbers.
 

Join the IGCA in Denmark!
The 2015 IGCA Congress will held in Denmark, starting out in Odense, from August 9 to 14. Attendees will partake in a wide range of Danish experiences, including visiting 10 top-notch garden centers, 3 castles, a botanical garden, museums and a Scandinavian design trade fair. Attendees will visit the Hans Christian Andersen Museum and the Odense Zoo, named one of Europe’s best zoos. The week finishes up with a trip to the original Legoland park in Billund and The Flower Festival, which draws nearly 250,000 visitors from all over the world each year. A perfect blend of professional development, cultural experiences and networking with international colleagues, don’t miss your chance to expand your horizons by attending the IGCA Congress in Denmark next August.

For more information, visit www.igccdenmark2015.org

Pat and Amanda Weakland started brewing their own beer more than a decade ago, long before the hobby became trendy in the U.S. For the garden center owners, the draw was simple: they wanted to drink better beer than what stores offered.

Then in 2007, there was a worldwide hop shortage due to bad weather in Europe and a drop in production in the U.S. Home, micro and craft brewers, who don’t have the big contracts that Budweiser and other massive beer makers have with growers, were hit hardest.

The Weaklands, who own The Windsor Gardener in Windsor, Colo., saw a business opportunity. They could grow and sell their own Humulus lupulus plants to other home brewers (and keep their own hobby going).

“I started accumulating as many different hop varieties as I could, and we started growing them in 2007,” Pat says. “As of now we have 54 different hop varieties that we grow on 2.5 acres. We sell [the plants] nationwide on the internet.”

What started as a small side business began to evolve, and soon Amanda and Pat realized these home brew enthusiasts needed equipment to create their beers. In 2010, Pat and Amanda started selling beer-making supplies in what's now called the High Hops Home Brew Shop, a 1,000-square-foot shed-like structure inside of The Windsor Gardener retail greenhouse. The area now spills out into the gift area and accounts for 30 percent of the gifts category and 15 percent of overall sales.

“We kind of jumped in and said, let’s just go for it,” says Amanda. “We outgrew the home brew shop really quickly, and we added a lot more area within the greenhouse to carry all of the supplies.”

The Windsor Gardener’s website advertises hop plants and home brew supplies just below annuals and perennials, vegetables and herbs. It has become a major category for the 13-year-old store.

Like many business owners can attest, Amanda says, it was a “your customers will tell you what you need” situation.

For example, customers wanted help making their own beer, which led to the Weaklands next business venture. On Sunday afternoons, Amanda, Pat and their son, Zach, started offering home brew classes at the garden center, and they created delicious concoctions that received rave reviews.

“We came up with some awesome recipes,” Pat says. “On the west side of the greenhouse, we have this beautiful view of the mountains, and it overlooks our hop field. While making beer one day, we thought, wouldn’t this be a great place for a tasting room and to have our own brewery here?”

Colorado is a mecca for craft and microbreweries, boasting more than 200, which means 10 percent of all breweries in the country are in the state. But Windsor, which is 60 miles north of Denver and has about 20,000 residents, didn’t have its own local establishment yet. The Weaklands filled that void and launched High Hops Brewery, which consists of a separate production facility on the 16-acre garden center property, and a tasting room known as the "Hop Hut" within the garden center. Zach, who was just a preschooler when the Weaklands opened their first garden center, Plant-A-Scape, is now the head brewer.

“It’s nice in those dead months when garden centers are running negative because it’s helped bring people in,” Pat says. “We have all of these people and all of this noise, and it’s kind of like a party going on. People are drinking beer and the parking lot is full but,” Amanda chimes in here, as she often does: “There is nobody in the garden center,” she says, laughing.

“But we open up the back where we grow plants as an indoor beer garden so people can sit in the sun in the greenhouse and drink beer all winter,” she says. “It can be 0 degrees outside during the day, and it’s like summertime in here.”

The tasting room can sit about 40 people, and the patio adds another 60 spaces in the summer. The greenhouse adds another 60 in the winter. The tasting room attracts new families, younger residents and people who already shop at the garden center. There is plenty of outdoor space for kids to play, so many parents bring their little ones. Food trucks park outside Thursday through Sunday.

“We’re a brewery, not a bar, so we close early, and you don’t get the people who just want to party,” Amanda says.

The tasting room has 16 taps, nine of which are dedicated to their year-round brews. Pat is also a dentist three days a week, so “Dr. Pat’s Double IPA” is in honor of him, complete with a logo of a dentist inspecting the mouth of a hop flower.

A year after High Hops opened, they began bottling and distributing their beer in Colorado, and are looking for other opportunities.

“It helps us be more of a destination because we’re not in a shopping center where there are other stores to help draw customers,” Amanda says. “So we have to have some kind of unique (aspect) to make people want to stop.”

The labor-intensive hop field doesn't bring in much money, they say, but it helps support business, and with so many different varieties, the field itself is a draw. Though the endeavor has mostly been successful, hop yields have decreased since they started growing the plants. A few years ago, they produced over 500 pounds of hops. This year, they only harvested 250 pounds. But they’ve come up with innovative ways to get cheap labor.

“We have a hop harvest festival and invite volunteers to come help pick our hops every year,” Pat says. “We have food, beer and music and a contest to see who can pick the most weight of hops. Just last year we picked over 250 pounds of hops in a little over two hours.”

They also offer novelties like the hop shot. They press dry whole hops using a coffee press, and infuse that nectar into beer. That creates a potent, more aromatic beverage that sets them apart from other garden centers, and breweries, in the area.

“It hit the nerd in us,” says Amanda, who majored in biology and chemistry. “There is something special about drinking your own beer. It’s something you can share with others.”

If you've been finding yourself using the same merchandising ideas over and over, why not look outside the industry to get some ideas and shake things up? Take a look at the fresh concepts we saw at retail stores ranging from a local quilt shop to a candy store.

Photos by Karen E. Varga

In a community with a population of nearly half a million residents, there were once three major places to purchase pond supplies in Greenville County, S.C., for the average homeowner. Two were independently owned, and one was the big box that claimed to have “pond plants and accessories.” As the trend grew, one independent business owner decided to retire, unable to handle the increased work load, leaving the other indie business to pick up the slack. One garden center was the expert and educated customers, and the big box store sold less expensive product. This led to confusion among the pond hobbyists. What’s more important: price or knowledge?

Professionals already know the key to being successful is to have a very strong background and knowledge in what you’re selling. If you’re not comfortable with what you’ve got on your shelves, you might as well just tuck it away in the basement to rot, chalk it up to a bad idea and move on.

Not so fast. Invest some time learning the category and educating staff and you can become the leader of your local industry of pond supplies and construction. Most garden centers hit the snooze button during the winter, awaiting the spring rush, but this is the best time to educate not only you, but your staff as well on something new and broaden your business horizons. The more versatile your store, the larger your customer base.
 

Not just a hole in the ground

The most basic thing you must know and explain to your customers is that a pond cannot simply be a hole in the ground with water and fish. Ponds are delicate ecosystems that require a certain finesse to get right, but once you’ve got it, they’re pretty much maintenance-free. What you’ll find yourself struggling with the most is the cheap, pre-fab pond in kits that the big box stores sell. There are multitudes of problems with pre-fab plastic pond kits, such as:

• Lack of proper filtration equipment that leads to more maintenance and upkeep in the long run.
• No basin for biological filtration, which causes the customer to constantly need to use chemicals. That's great for you, but will eventually aggravate your customers.
• Pumps and powered equipment in these ponds tend to lack quality and give out the second they are clogged.
• The grade of plastic used in the pre-fab tubs is inferior and prone to cracking and leaking after a few season changes, which leads to customer dissatisfaction, as well.
   

Using high quality, flexible, EPDM rubber is the key to a successful, versatile pond. Not only do your customers have the ability to choose the size and shape of their pond, but they can continue to add onto relatively easily The other benefits to the EPDM rubber liner is that it’s tough; the 45-mil liner has a 20-year warranty and will withstand freezing and thawing with no chance of cracking. That resistance increases when paired with a suitable underliner to protect any sharp roots from poking through the rubber, although they have to be ridiculously sharp roots, such as bamboo.
 

Establishing a foundation

The concept of starting with a rubber liner might be a bit overwhelming, but just like building a house, you have to start with a firm foundation to create something that will stand the test of time. After starting with the rubber, you then have to consider both filtration systems and waterfall weirs. Possibilities are endless with filtration systems and ponds, everything from external mechanical filtration pumps to skimmer boxes with replaceable pads are out there.

The best thing to do as a garden center owner is decide what you feel comfortable dealing with and explaining to your customer. A skimmer can easily take care of all of your mechanical filtration needs (such as leaves, fish excrement and typical particulates that water attracts,) but you’ll need to have a biological filtration system, as well.

Think of a pond not only like building a house, but also like your digestive system. In your stomach there are billions of enzymes working to break up your food and aid in the removal of toxins in your body. Ponds work in much the same way, provided they have a place to live. Beneficial bacteria in ponds colonize in areas with lots of surface area and decent water turn over.

When explaining the needs of biological filtration to customers, think about your intestines. There's tons of surface area, and it’s all needed to make sure everything operates smoothly. The biological media in which pond bacteria will live needs plenty of room as well. There are different types available, ranging from small, multi-sided orbs to a bio-ribbon that creates a large surface area looking somewhat like a big ball of noodles.

The old way of creating this biological filtration was lava rock, but that has become outdated, so urge your customers to get with the times and upgrade to the new technology in pond supplies.
 

Treatments, not chemicals

The word you must remember to avoid at all costs is “chemical.” The word sounds harsh, and to some, dangerous. Using the words “pond treatments” as opposed to “pond chemicals” will make customers more comfortable with what they’re pouring into their water. You can hire somebody who will spend all of his/her time trying to educate customers about the difference between algae killing treatment and an algae prevention tactic. Instead, provide a detailed online reference that the customer can pull up on their phone using a QR code or even just a link on your website.

What you absolutely must have on your shelves are:

• Preventative algae treatments, such as barley bales and extract, and algae killing treatments
• Anti-sludge treatments to metabolize the debris that settles to the bottom of the pond and becomes that stinky stuff we call sludge
• Flocculants, or a fancy term for the treatment that takes all of the small suspended particles like pollen and binds them together
• Dechlorinator and stress coat, which are critical when it comes down to selling goldfish and Koi
• Filter materials, both biological and mechanical
• Enzymes to create biological colonies in a pond
• Replacement pumps
   

You don’t need to have a pond section that is huge, but as long as you know the basics, you can ease your customer into the pond hobby with confidence. Make your garden center that one place in your community that the hobbyists can turn to. You’ll find that working through different pond supply wholesalers like Water Landscape Supply and Coastal Pond Supply, the prices that you offer your customers won’t be any higher than what they’ll find online with the bonus of being local.

If you’re not in the pond business, it’s certainly something you should “pond”er. You might find yourself wanting one, too.

Nikki is a horticulturist and professional adventurer who uses her experiences and knowledge to manage a successful garden center in Greenville, S.C. pepitaweed@gmail.com