On 31/5/08 06:57, in article , "Alan"
wrote:

In message et, Dave
Liquorice wrote
On Fri, 30 May 2008 13:43:22 +0100, stuart noble wrote:

But it would cost too much (mainly because of the celebrity's salary
demands probably).

Hasn't most of the discussion about this being saying that a "celebrity"
is the last person wanted or needed to front the show.

A celebrity is exactly the right kind of person for the show. You only
have to listen to a gardening show on the radio to see that the
'experts' rarely agree on anything so having a show presented by one of
these would be biased towards one point of view. Having someone who
knows little about gardening means that you will get a program with many
'guests' and with the presenter asking the kind of searching questions
that the average punter would ask such as: "Why does every garden centre
only have plants that are in flower when they should have plants that
reach their peak when the customer has planted them at home"?

Don't go to garden centres if that's what you want, go to nurseries. Garden
centres *rely* on plants coming in at their peak and going out almost
immediately. They are, virtually, plant supermarkets and they don't want a
lot of stock lying around because that means they need staff who know how to
tend it. We know from experience that some gcs throw out stuff that they
have had in at its peak but which hasn't sold. There's nothing wrong with
it but they either know it won't sell or they want the space. A large
amount of money is wasted that way and in the end, the customer pays for it.
It is a certain fact that if customers see something in flower they're much
more likely to buy it. The more knowledgeable gardener is aware that you
can buy something in March and wait for it to flower in June. Others,
perhaps gulled by the makeover 'instant' gardening programmes, want to take
home an azalea in flower. Last summer, one of the staff brought a trolley
load of Penstemons down from the 'storage' area that isn't open to the
public. She intended to put them out on display but because they were
coming into flower, people were literally snatching them off the trolley.
That happened twice within 20 minutes and they never did make it to their
intended display.

--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
'We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
children.'