Telling Your Story

Jennifer Polanz

While touring the Monrovia booth at Cultivate’24 this year, I was impressed by how well they told the story of their craftsmanship, dividing the areas into “field stations” to highlight key elements. Some of the techniques they use, particularly when it comes to grafting and training topiaries, date back decades. It’s vital they communicate how they achieve a certain standard so that everything produced is consistent.

For example, in the grafting section, they included the instructional handbook, as well as actual starts that had been grafted and images and captions detailing the history of grafting at Monrovia. In the topiary section, they included multiple sizes of the same selection at different intervals (five years, eight months; six to seven years; seven years). They also highlighted a hand drawing of the optimal sizes for a three-tiered “poodle” juniper topiary.

All of this got me thinking: How can you tell the story of something you do exceptionally well? If you’re a grower-retailer, can you talk about
how you grow plants, with photos showing the cutting or seed all the way through to full-size product, along with how long it takes? If you’re retail-only, can you work with your grower to create something like this? Is it a display in the garden center or a page on the website (or both)? GP