Making tough decisions

Viola Deltini Rose Pink.  Click on the image to see a slide show of this week's Glowing availability list.

The Viola's featured this week are quite possibly amongst the best we have ever grown, and they are amongst the last we will grow on spec. in 100mm pots.  We are focussing on the theme of "focus" this year and to ensure we maintain our focus we have had to make some hard decisions about things we should no longer do. Some of these decisions over the past few years have been easy. Deciding to quit growing 100mm potted colour has been much more challenging because we know that without the 100mm offering some of our most loyal supporters will be disappointed and will have to look elsewhere for their colour pots.

We have made our decision because the 100mm colour pot does not fit with the guidelines we have set ourselves for selecting plants to grow.  In broad terms we are looking for plants that provide us, our retail partners and gardeners with value. We believe that value is judged mostly on longevity, not price. Daisies, Gerbera Garvinea, Geranium, Bouvardia, Spreading Petunia, New Guinea Impatiens, Rosemary and many others allow us an extended window to sell our plants, offer the retail garden centre shelf life and the home gardener plants that will, with care offer years, not months of pleasure.

Having said that we are not abandoning our 'annual' heritage, we will continue growing annual seedlings in punnets and in advanced display pots.  We have trialled Pansy & Viola in 140mm pots over the past couple of years and we are convinced they offer a longer selling window to both us and the retail nursery, plus we will continue to grow 200mm "Bloomer" pots.  We also know that these larger pots provide the Independent retailer a point of difference to the Big Box Hardware stores that are all to keen to prove their "price competitiveness" on what they consider to be cheap and cheerful loss leaders. We cannot beat them at that game.  Independents succeed on value, service, knowledge and quality.

It is also important to note that we haven't lost the capacity to grow high quality 100mm colour pots to order.  Help us to help you with contract orders for landscaping jobs or in preparation for special events and we believe we can offer a terrific product at a keen price.  Contract growing 100mm potted colour takes 6-8 weeks, so long as we have the plants required on hand.  12-14 weeks if we start from scratch and sow seed for selected colour.

Viola Deltini Honey Bee.