Today, for lunch, Rick Welder (Today's Garden Center account rep extraodinaire) and I went on a quick, local field-trip. We went to Bremec Greenhouses & Nursery.
It was a little dreary out: 45 and rainy. Once you stepped into their main retail greenhouse, though, it didn't matter. The smell was enough for the two of us. It smelled like earth, go figure. I like to think that our reaction to the smell of dirt and tiny, not-ready-for-retail plants is representative of the consumer in the northern half of the contiguous 48. (Below, Rick was all about the Sweet Peet. One of the Bremec employees said they fly through the stuff, and she didn't mean by the bag, but by the yard.)
I think there needs to be a national campaign, a Visit Your Local Garden Center in February Day that promotes visiting your local garden center before it's even ready for you to be there. Kind of like what Rick and I did today. It's all about the bug, and using cabin fever to your advantage.
It's that whole scent-to-memory sensory thing. The olfactory bulb in your brain has "intimate access to something called the amygdala, which processes emotion, and the hippocampus, which is responsible for associative learning." Make your customers connect. Make them remember what mid-June smells like.
Bremec's is in that "getting ready" stage, so there wasn't much to drool over plant-wise. They do, however, have a relatively new and expansive structure that acts as their pottery barn. Its permanent openings were temporarily covered with protective plastic sheets. The inside was packed with pots, statuaries and fountains.
All I know is I'm getting pretty tired of talking about "getting ready." Smell ya later!
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