Six White Lies Garden Centers Tell Customers
Having hung around a few garden centers and nurseries in my day, I’d like to give you a few of the white lies nurseries tell their customers. These don’t include the really, really bad lies delivered by nursery staff who themselves don’t know any better – those we just consider incompetent.
Sure groundcovers will smother out grass.
What planet did this come from? Grass is by far and away the single best invader in any form of gardening – from the perennial border to the groundcover area.
Perennials live for a very long time and you don’t have to do anything to them.
Right and I have a bridge we should talk about. Why do customers get upset when their Aquilegia live for 2-3 years and then croak. Ahh, let me introduce you to the concept of “short-lived perennial”. And how come there’s a big dead spot in the middle of my shasta daisy? Ahhh, it’s because the mother plant dies out regularly and you have to dig out the center replacing it with the surrounding babies.
No problem, you can control this easily.
Good grief – they still sell stuff in garden centers because they can – not because they should. This is why I get pleas for help and assistance in getting rid of Viola cornuta (pretty non-fragrant flowers unless yellow), Crown Vetch (everblooming all summer in pink) Goutweed (lovely will grow anywhere – and everywhere) and don’t even get me started on Physalis (Chinese lantern) – that stuff will grow through concrete.
You don’t have to water this plant – it’s a xeric-lover – see on the tag?
Nope, you don’t have to water them – you can watch them shrivel up in the full hot sun, in sandy soil beloved of suburban developers and wonder what you’re doing wrong.
Corn gluten kills weeds.
I’m seeing a lot of this one lately – as in why don’t my dandelions die – I put corn gluten on them. Ahhh, it’s because it a pre-emergent to stop seeds from germinating, not a weed-killer.
Our plants are the best in the area.
Huh, they come off the same truck as those from the big box stores – from the same nurseries. Maybe you have a different pot color but let’s call a Shasta a Shasta here – same nursery, same truck. Or maybe a different truck but still – same nursery. The difference – sometimes (and I stress sometimes) the local garden center knows how to water their stock – but get ‘em off the truck and it’s a price contest.
Those are six that came to mind after answering a few questions from upset readers this morning. I’m sure you have others you’d like to add.
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About Doug
True, very true. Of course, if they told the truth they wouldn’t make a sale!
At my garden center we don’t do business with any wholesale nurseries that service the box stores. Maybe in other parts of the country it’s harder to do, since there are not as many nurseries as here in Nor Cal.
I could take issue with the other “white lies”, but again, maybe it’s different in other parts of the country. There are certainly some indie nurseries who do perhaps tell the white lies you mention.
As to Dwayne’s comment above that, “Of course, if they told the truth they wouldn’t make a sale!” So indie garden centers only stay in business because they lie? Geez, I would love to know what Dwayne does for a living.
I don’t claim to stand for indie garden centers. Some are lousy, just like some box store garden centers are lousy. If this post accurately reflects the nursery and garden center environment where you live Doug, than I can certainly understand the rant. I do think however that you have painted with too broad a brush when perhaps a finer, sharper tool might have been appropriate.
Doug,
Thank you for addressing this important issue. Transparency is as transparency does. Bringing the underlying issue to the forefront is a good thing. I agree that many and probably the vast majority of garden centers are just playing the game with about the same level of consciousness toward the consumer as the big box retailer. You can see it on their shelves and benches in products they wouldn’t use themselves, and plants they wouldn’t give their own mothers.
These days articles such as this one expose what the vast majority of consumers have already come to believe – “The big-box is the same or as good as the independent garden center”. The consumer alreayd voted with their credit card.
To make it as an independent in the future the clear job is to be REAL. The customer will spread the word, and then the advertising will be believable. Anyone who tries to fake it will be discovered (although their local consumers already know), and skunked out on the Internet.
While there may be a few garden centers with staff PURPOSELY using this method of sales, lying to make a sale, I feel there are fewer than you lead one to believe. I feel Sales Associates may do this because they have a lack of product/plant knowledge and may be unaware of certain bits of information or procedures that need to be followed when using certain products/plants. Product/plant training is so important. The number of products/plants found in a garden center can be huge and a challenge to learn for some and for some the knowledge builds as they see other associates modeling the correct sales pitch for the product/plant. Independent garden centers have an edge when it comes to this type training. We know that we want customers to return! How about folowing with Six questions that a customer need to ask to avoid these 6 problems above?
At my garden center lying to customers is forbidden under any circumstances. Can we give advice that is possibly wrong. Yes we are human. Do we lie. No.
Thanks Doug,
Sometimes it’s good to know the right questions to ask. (e.g. how aggressive is that ground cover, how much room does it need, how hard is it to pull out if it oversteps it’s bounds, does it reseed or send runners?) I never ask any questions at a box store. The staff is usually retail oriented and not necessarily gardeners. At the independent nurseries I have a better chance to get a good answer if I know what questions to ask. They are both in the business to sell plants, of course. The best way to get the whole story is to ask a fellow gardener – if you can find one with experience with the plant in question and if they will take the time to tell you the WHOLE story. Other than that it’s back to trial and error.
@Sid – I’m a big fan of the indie garden center – I ran my own for almost 25 years growing 16-1800 varieties of perennials and 6-800 varieties of annuals (depending on the year). It was a family operation with more signage than you can believe possible (one of the first computer sign programs) and all I did was stand and answer questions all day – the kids did the carrying and fetching (there was method in my madness)
We got taken out by increasing fixed costs and the introduction of PW etc to the chains. I recognized the early warning signs in the books and shut it down (the fact that I was actually making more money writing didn’t hurt that decision). Your point about transparency is imho bang-on to the entire issue and will be dealt with on a store by store basis. And it’s a message I’ve been thinking about myself – the entire notion of “social media” and the underlying issues of transparency don’t depend on software (i.e. twitter and facebook) but translate into the real world of small nurseries and writers equally. I think your last sentence sums it really nicely – this issue will be won or lost in each independent and how they treat their consumers – because you’re right – there isn’t a place to hide anymore (and boy do I hear from those who discover the bad news)
@Ellen – it doesn’t matter whether you purposely use it or not – a mistake / your intent – doesn’t matter to the consumer who discovers the opposite.
@Victor – see above answer plus Sid’s note – we all make mistakes (I can’t even begin to count the ones I’ve made that I just asked my readers to point out – going to take me a month to fix it all)
but the bottom line – a consumer can’t tell the difference between a mistake and an artful lie – except when it comes to the bottom line of what happens in the garden.
@Marie – finding the right questions to ask is about finding the experience to be a gardener (you’ve nailed that). The problem comes when the newcomers (the customers the indie g.c’s desperately want) don’t succeed with their plants. I used to have some plants on sales tables labelled “can’t kill plants” – just for people so they’d succeed in their gardens (and come back).
@Trey – I commented on your blog so won’t repeat it here either – it’s not a local issue that I write about – my traffic and questions come continent-wide.
Doug, I have to disagree with you on the plants coming from the same nursery (just as trev did). At the independent nursery I work for, we deal with a great many local growers that only sell to independents. They don’t repackage their plants for chain stores. And although the plant varieties may be the same, I can tell you that the soil they are planted in is, in most cases, not. It is amazing how much healthier a plant will remain when planted in a good potting mix. Monrovia’s plants look great when they come into the nursery and great when they go out. We used to carry plants from some of the same nurseries as the box stores, but they would always crash within weeks because there were no nutrients in the soil. How well do you think they are going to settle into a customer’s yard if they have such a short shelf life?
Although I’m sure there are nurseries where the staff will lie to make a sale, I never have. The funny thing is, you would be surprised at the number of times a customer wants you to lie. I have gone out of my way to explain why a particular plant will not thrive in a particular clients yard only to have them start manipulating their data to get the plant. They have gone from having a full-sun, dry location to having a shady moist location.
Your post paints an over generalized picture of dark and deceitful garden centers across the nation and I just don’t think that is the case. I believe that, especially in smaller towns, people do business in the same way that they live. In most cases, that is honestly.
Doug,
gardeners know some of the questions to ask. I still plant mistakes but maybe a few less than I used to. It’s all part of the adventure of gardening. If I were there I’d give you a great big hug for all the help you’ve given me over the years!
Your sites, newsletters and blog help new and old
@Kat – would I be surprised how people change the nature of their garden to fit the plant they crave? Nah – been there, done that.
And the point that I’ll make again is that it really doesn’t matter what individual independents do – it’s the overall impression and operation of the trade that counts. I have no doubt in small towns that people behave differently – read Sid’s note to get a handle on this – and having lived in small towns/communities almost all my life, I can say that social proof is alive and well there. And about the “lying” – many of these white lies are delivered out of conviction that they’re the truth – I have no doubt about that, and this speaks of course to my comments earlier.
@Marie – I’ll take the e-hug for now.
And yeah, we all still do “mistakes” in the garden every year and anybody who tells you differently …. A few less every year is good – in fact great. Me, I just make different ones and call it a success if I don’t make the same one two years in a row. 
While I certainly don’t believe our staff lies to the customer, and we take great care in training our staff to answer questions accurately and supply reference material if needed, I understand the premise of your article to be the customer’s perception of inaccurate information. From my experience the indies do a better job of training their employees on the products they carry, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t bad eggs out there. An increasing issue is the customer’s perception of what the best products are for their garden. I’m finding more customers asking for products I would discourage using. Unfortunately there are times they will not be swayed to the more appropriate products because the advertising they’ve been exposed to has created recognizable brands. In ever other aspect of our shopping we’ve been trained to recognize brands and choose accordingly. Yet, in our industry, there are so few recognized brands that consumers assume the names they know from advertising is what’s best for them. It’s a comfort level based on nothing but 30 seconds on TV or an ad in the newspaper or magazine that may not even be intended for their region. Information now travels at light speed all over the world. We have to virtually scream over all the content available in so many forms in order to get the right information for the consumer. We also have to understand that not ever consumer will understand the message.
“Huh, they come off the same truck as those from the big box stores – from the same nurseries.”
Not at my nursery, nor at most independent nurseries I know. The wholesale industry has really split: those who serve the box chains, and those who serve the rest of us. Very few growers who sell to the big chains bother with small independent nurseries any more, and we aren’t real interested in their products anyway.
As for your other five examples, we don’t say those things here. But I’ll assume you were over-simplifying to make a point.
@Krystal – we share the problem of geography and message. I get queries literally from 75 countries a year and there’s no way I can deal with the regional differences in North American gardening never mind other countries. The Net is indeed a game changer and it’s a rare week that somebody doesn’t email asking about product X or product Y that they’ve seen advertised or recommended somewhere on the Net. In many ways, we’re both frontline contacts with gardeners – I get a wide range of input from across the continent/world and garden centers undoubtedly get the same input from their biz market. It is inded an interesting problem to be constantly bombarded with reader queries about this advice or that advice they got from their garden center, Internet blog or ad. And more importantly – to make sense of it all *from the customer point of view* (something that’s all too easy to forget)
@Don – yes, in some ways simplfying and generalizing to make a point (hey I can’t list every garden center and what they sell or not)
So – those who think they’re doing a good job defend their industry and those who don’t read blogs – don’t give a damn. I’ve been in a big-chain supply operation supplying 100 Lowes Stores with perennials – where a grower friend who produces about 8 million pots/year and I talked about whether he should buy the place for a nickel – a nickel a pot less would put that grower out of business and my buddy could have the operation – - until somebody nickled him. 
So I understand size from having worked in wholesale. And for the most part, I understand the small to and large sized wholesale operations tend to limit their sales to specific channels – it’s in the middle sized or in specific areas that you get overlap (again generalizing – but when you see Iseli evergreens complete with tags in Home Depot – you gotta wonder)
Iseli? The place from Oregon with a minimum of 10000 shipping units? Oregon growers work hard to sell nationwide, because there is not sufficient demand in-state for their excellent products. It doesn’t surprise me at all that you see them in HD. But their minimum is way too high for a small nursery such as mine.
Recently our very first big-box retailer opened here in Davis, CA: a Target superstore, complete with garden center. It opened October 15. Our first frost is likely here around Thanksgiving (Sunset Zone 14; USDA Zone 9). ALL the plants on display were from one large grower, clearly selected by the grower. We know that Target does pay-at-scan (i.e., guaranteed sale) with this grower.
The display? Mandevilla, New Guinea Impatiens, and Cosmos. Hundreds of them. Bougainvillea patio trees. Plus a nice display of mums, which will survive more than the six weeks I’d give the other selections. Mixed in with the snapdragons and pansies (appropriate here now) were flats of marigolds.
It doesn’t matter if they are “lying” or not there. In fact, there was nobody around to even greet me. The plants are not appropriate and will simply die as nature intended, and another crop of customers gets disappointed and gives up on gardening.
@Don – yeah, you’re right those are large minimums – I’ve obviously not been ordering for some time. And isn’t offering tender plants such as this a form of “lying” – your point exactly I’m sure. I can take you to any number of garden centers in the East selling half-hardy mums as “hardy perennials” – independents as well as the boxes. (although the northern ones are pretty much done now) I give you they’re not selling many annuals (except pansies) but still.
Well, our plants ARE the best in the region, lol. We grow all of our own annuals and perennials, most of our shrubs and evergreens, and some of our trees. What we do buy in, are varieties and sizes that no one else carries.
We don’t lie or misrepresent product–we actually spend a lot of time steering people away from bad choices. The problem is, many customers would rather hear a bald-faced lie than the hard truth. When a customer has decided that a arborvitae hedge on the south side of their house is just the ticket to screen off the neighbors, they get downright irrate when we tell them it won’t work in this climate. They don’t want to hear “no”, they want to hear “ya sure, you betcha!” It can take a lot of persuasion–even a little arm twisting– to steer then towards a more appropriate solution. When you’re busy, it IS tempting to just agree with them and take their money, but that will surely come back to haunt you. Bad, bad karma.
And we don’t sell plants out of their season. We don’t even bother will fall mums because 99% of fall-planted mums winter kill around here. The box stores can deal with that mess, lol.
Gotta admit, though, I have heard some pretty bad advice from both box stores and nurseries. Some of it was lack of knowledge/training/experience, but some of it was just “tell the customer whatever they want to hear to make the sale”. That’s always disappointing.
@Cathy – you’re the second trade person to mention the customer-decision making and changing-mind phenomenon. Interesting take on retail pyschology and branding by the really big marketing forces. Makes me wonder how we get a bit of that action?
I agree with everything but think you are a little hard on ground covers. I have several ground covers in part and full shade without problems with grass competition or any other weeds for that matter. Good ground covers for sun are limited and the few that can compete with grass are invasive.
wow! I am a fairly “new” gardener, so I have learned much over the last couple of years. One thing that I took into my gardening experience from my general life experience is to always do my homework. I do some research on the plants prior to going to any greenhouse or nursery. I also ask questions, and many times, I ask the same question to more than one person working. I also go to the same nursery most of the time, so they know me there. I make sure that I have my voice heard as well: about the type of soil, where I live in the area, as there are many different climates near.
as with most anything in our lives, we must take responsibility for the best experience we can have….and IF a nursery out and out lied to me…I would NOT be going back there AND I would be telling the fellow gardeners that I meet at other nurseries!
as far as big box stores go, the Menards Garden Center had an expert gardener on staff 2-3 days per week which I found very helpful. and while several had some of the same brand (ie: Proven Winners) the way they were cared for appeared to be much different.
as with many things in life, we must take the responsibility to educate ourselves prior to buying most anything. I also do not have any issue with saying something to the person whom I believe was trying to give me ‘inaccurate’ information!
at least that is what I think about life somewhere over the rainbow!!
My biggest complaint about my garden centers are the many, many plants they carry that aren’t hardy in my area (Eastern WA, zone 5). Not everyone that shops at Costco, Home Depot, Lowes, or even the independent garden stores are conversant regarding zones. They see something they like and buy it . . . and then buy it again next season . . . and again the season after that.
Boy, I’ve heard all of those. And here down South, we often get plants in our garden centers that will rarely survive our summers. I’ve found it best to do my research before I go plant shopping. Thanks for your interesting and informative articles.
Not one of my friends who “garden” understood this before I explained it to them. Seems a little more education at the nursery level is in order.
Great article!
Doug you are the liar here… If you feel we GCO’s are the same as the box stores your head is in the sand.
@Greg – thanks for the comment – sorry you can’t advance the conversation other than to make personal slurs.