In article ,
says...
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.


And don't blame the garden centres or nurseries for offering plants in
flower, you try standing all day at a plant sale not selling you plants
which are green and watching a stream of customers carrying off inflower
foxgloves and see how long it takes you to figure that people want stuff
with flower on :~)
Last weekend I took along a display plant in full flower with a tray of
for sale plants of the same thing, everyone wanted the big plant in
flower dispite being told that it would wilt and die if not kept watered
in its pot and if they planted it they would need to cut it off to get it
to establish.
They want flowers and have so little patience (or maybe its confidence in
their ability)they want them now!
We now have to rope off the young plants to stop people buying them as
they come into flower, they will spurn the 3 year old cut back ready to
go plants in favour of just gone in the pot single stem jobs - but the
have a single flower at the top of the stem.
Yet I have to admit when going around other peoples gardens although not
all to my taste they appear perfectly normal! so are the customers as
daft as we think? they seem to get away with buying badly and obviously
enjoy their gardens.
--
Charlie Pridham, Gardening in Cornwall
www.roselandhouse.co.uk
Holders of national collections of Clematis viticella cultivars and
Lapageria rosea