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Views from Across the Pond
Reaping the Benefits of a Garden Tour
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Text and photos by Trevor Cole
Our home is on the Botanical Gardens Private Garden Tour this spring. We have more than nine water features in our yard as well as various outdoor living elements that we sell at the store. Our personal garden is the canvas on which we showcase what all we sell, ranging from outdoor kitchens and fireplaces to furniture, statuary, birdfeeders, pavers, lighting, outdoor art, firepits, water features and more.
My wife Jeannie loves this arrangement. For years she felt like the cobbler’s child who had no shoes. I spent long hours building our business, with few left over to work in my own yard.
That changed a few years ago when I decided it was time to make my home my well-landscaped castle. Now we use our home as an example of what we sell. One of our local landscapers, who lives in our neighborhood, also uses our home as a ‘showroom’ to give customers ideas and to help them visualize a finished product. He buys his materials from us and refers his customers back for all the outdoor living accoutrements. He has sold several hundred-thousands of dollars worth of work from our 'showroom,' and we get the material supply for all his jobs.
A show-yard does not need to be large or elaborate. In fact, sometimes having a variety of scale is equally appealing. While you want customers to dream big, you also want them to see small, 'do-able' projects they can have immediately. Even the most modest home or apartment can have something eye-catching.
The first time our home was featured on a garden tour, we lived in a modest shotgun-style home with a postage-stamp yard near downtown. It was a house that I designed, built and landscaped. All we had was a 100-gallon above-ground pond, an arbor with a swing and a birdfeeding station. Despite the diminutive size, the garden was immaculately maintained and featured lots of seasonal color. At the time I was starting our landscape business so I would invite my customers to come and see my work. It became my shop window, and I sold a lot of work from that yard.
I lived in an average home, in an average neighborhood with an above-average landscape. We lived on a busy street near a stop sign, and because of the above-average landscape, strangers often came to our front door to ask who did our landscaping, and passers-by would stop to take pictures. Between the garden tour and the street traffic, we quickly grew our business and could command above-average rates because we were perceived as ‘higher-end’ landscapers. This separated us from most of our competition.
Even though I have a real shop window -- my stores -- I still use my personal garden as a living example. Whether customers are dreaming big or for instant gratification, my yard is always on display as a billboard for our business.
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