I was email-chatting with colleague Jen Polanz about the general consumer lack of knowledge about the appropriateness of the fall season for planting perennials (and trees and shrubs, for that matter). She'd mentioned a conversation with one of her friends—a best friend at that!—who had said, “I assume [perennials] is all stuff to plant in the spring, correct?”

Not correct at all! Jen gave her the lowdown on fall planting and, hopefully, her friend ran out to one of your stores to pick up all the goodies.

“She’s been gardening for a couple of years,” Jen told me. “So that tells me the message is not out there the way it should be.”

Which begs the question—what’s the best way it should be out there to reach gardeners? I know many of us have drilled it into our customers’ heads about fall lawn prep. And, yes, much of that has to do with a big advertising push by the manufacturers involved with that segment. What will it take to bring even half of that lawn prep awareness to perennials/shrubs/trees? Maybe “Fall is for Planting” signage near the lawn care department as a reminder. It’s a start. But how are we best going to drive customers to your store for the purpose of purchasing all the fall-is-for-planting goodies?

Have you been successful at this messaging? How’d you do it? Let’s brainstorm some ideas so we can all benefit. Drop your ideas to me at ewells@ballpublishing.com.

Fall is also the time to evaluate what varieties you want to grow and sell for next year. Eason Horticultural Resources can help by offering an objective take on the new varieties available to you for next spring.

Take a gander at the 2021 version of their New Varieties Report—the 17^th edition! While in previous versions of the New Varieties Report they’ve strictly covered that year’s California Spring Trials, EHR has shaken things up a little bit for 2021. What this means for the grower is that they're including items from CAST ’21 and also varieties that may have been released after the CAST event. The change also allowed EHR to include information on varieties based on trial performances from across the country. If you ask me, this sounds like a bonus.

As we’ve said in each previous announcement of EHR’s New Varieties Report, this one is a bit different because of the company’s independent opinions on the varieties due to EHR’s non-alignment with specific genetics. If you’d like to download the report, you can do so by going HERE—it’s right on the home page. If you’d like a printed version, they can do that, too. Just email info@ehrnet.com to request one.

National Indoor Plant Week, that is. I haven’t any news about it—no press releases, no company promotions, no inquiries from folks about the promotion of indoor plants during the third week of September. So I’m curious if you all will be pushing indoor plants any more than usual September 19-25 (or 20-26).

The National Day Calendar website (of which Bossman Chris Beytes is an ardent fan) includes a nice consumer-focused page on all the great things indoor plants can do (clean the air! create oxygen! reduce noise!) and the great things folks can do with indoor plants (buy them! decorate with them! visit a greenhouse! take a class on plants!). They even have a nice list of some indoor plants with which folks might consider beginning their collection—things like Chinese money plant, succulents and spider plants.

Or maybe you’re thinking supplies are short—we don’t dare promote plants we don’t have. It all depends on your supply situation. Fair enough. But if you are, in fact, promoting National Indoor Plant Week and have remembered to do so without prodding from me, I’d love to know what you have planned. Drop me a NOTE about it.

Those of you who do holiday décor and gifts may be biting your nails down to the quick over the still-stalled shipping snafus. Several articles about the disruptions to the global supply chains appear on a daily basis, all of which try to break down the breakdown, but none of which can actually get the ships and trucks moving again.

According to a piece on CNN Business, this supply chain disruption is getting worse as time passes. And it’s more than likely that shoppers—and retailers like you—will be facing higher prices and fewer choices.

"The pressures on global supply chains have not eased and we do not expect them to any time soon," said Bob Biesterfeld, the CEO of C.H. Robinson, one of the world's largest logistics firms.

And here’s something you don’t want to read: "We currently expect the market situation only to ease in the first quarter of 2022 at the earliest," Hapag-Lloyd chief executive Rolf Habben Jansen said in a recent statement.

And another? “The chances of your vessel arriving on time are about 40%, when it was 80% this time last year," according to Bob Biesterfeld.

Drewry Shipping’s World Container Index shows the cost of shipping from China to North America and Europe continues to climb with the cost of shipping a 40-ft. container up 360% from a year ago. The worst? The route from Shanghai to Rotterdam increased 659%.

Here’s the good news. Port congestion, COVID-19 outbreaks at factories, port closures … it’s a lot for major retailers to handle with the upcoming all-important holiday sales season at our doors. Again, like what happened in spring 2019, smaller businesses are more flexible to meet consumer demand. As the CNN article suggested, “Shoppers … may need to have serval different gift ideas up their sleeves.”

Make your business the holiday gifting option. You have local connections. You can grow, source, order and replenish locally. Sure, it’s only September, but start dropping hints about the holidays—and how your local business is the best option for delivering holiday happiness on time.

You know how I love to share the viewpoint of Unity Marketing’s Pam Danziger on all topics related to retail. Pam’s thoughts on the upcoming holiday sales season can be summarized as one word: threatened.

She shares several more words about rising prices, product shortages and the Delta variant in her blog post HERE. Thought you might enjoy the read. And by “enjoy,” I mean read with an increasingly worried, but strategizing, mind.

Have you heard that Garden Media Group’s Garden Trends Report for ’22 is fresh out and ready for you to make next season’s plans around? The long and short of the future-forward report reveals that something that just makes so much sense to me: If 2020 was the year of crisis and 2021 is the year of languishing (for a lot of people that would be personal languishing—the hort biz certainly didn’t languish), then 2022 is looking to be the year of innovation.

This innovation has everything to do with the individual. We’ve all heard about the Great Resignation, right? The millions of folks who've quit their jobs either for better-jobs or to explore new careers/paths in life. After a year of stewing over the meaning of life and how they want to contribute, individuals will be reshaping themselves to live and give in the ways that bring them joy and satisfaction. We’re embarking on the Great Reset.

Over the next several weeks I’ll share a few of the trends from the Trends Report. Starting with the one I think is most accessible and the one that can bring you the quickest returns and that's the “Shoppertainment” trend. Thanks to advances in digital streaming content and live online events, the future of commerce will be a blend of online entertainment experiences that allow for in-stream purchasing.

What’s this look like? Unveiling some brand-new items to your line-up of plants or products, for example, and allowing those watching to buy on the spot. Who’s doing something like this? For an example of how it’s done, just turn to the beauty industry. Read about how Walmart and TikTok joined together for a spring shopping experience this past spring HERE.

In our own industry, the examples are small individual retailers such as jjenga’s plants (pictured above) and also bigger folks such as Costa Farms. How can you join the hybrid movement and sell plants via social? Drop me a note with your ideas at ewells@ballpublishing.com.

I’ve been saying for years that it’s in a business’ best interest to consider how they can embody the strategy of “yes and …” Yes, we're a garden center and also a café, or design firm or a bowling alley (I made that one up, but wouldn’t that be fun?). How about being a garden center and a water-feature business?

Aquascape Inc. can help you get there. The company has opened registration for a new training event called "Aquascape Academy: Starting and Succeeding with a Water Feature Business." It’s a 48-hour session over three days at the company’s corporate headquarters in St. Charles, Illinois (hey, that’s right by Ball HQ!). The event will help new and prospective business owners succeed with water features through workshops on operations, sales and marketing. Attendees will get the inside scoop on how Aquascape streamlines the process to design, build and sell water features for any property. 

It’s open to all experience and skill levels, and attendees will leave with a detailed game plan to execute in their future or existing business. There are multiple sessions coming up in November, December, January and February. Find out more and register at www.aquascapeacademy.com.

Maybe you’re ready for some live, in-person education with a bonus trade show! And if you’re in Canada, even better. Bill McCurry, Green Profit’s business-focused columnist extraordinaire, sent us information about an industry-related event he’s participating in north of the border. It’s the Green Industry Show & Conference to be held November 18-19 in Westerner Park, Red Deer, Alberta.

The GISC theme for 2021 is “Let’s Get Together!”, a reference to returning to a live event, but also the fact that everyone wants to get social again. Its location in Red Deer makes it central for all folks who want to attend across the province. The two-day event will include a 37,000-sq. ft. trade show, 10 hours of live education, the Growers Auction/Dinner, a Tailgate Party and the AGGA Garden Party.

Bill’s participation in the event is as a discussion leader on the Pre-Show Industry Bus Tour taking place November 17. If you’ve never had a discussion with Bill, what a treat! Albertans, don’t dare miss that chance.

For more information on the event, hotels, directions and how to register, head on over to www.greenindustryshow.com. And for those who can’t make it, the GISC will be offering GISC 2021—the Virtual Sequel! This will be a full day of online education taking place online on November 24. What a great idea.