Digger magazine

Serving the Northwest Nursery Industry for Over 50 Years

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Knowing your customers

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“Location, location, location.” I have often heard that those three words are paramount for any brick-and-mortar retail business. I do not dispute their importance. Location matters for garden centers, too, but I think that three other words have greater importance: “Know your customers.” Knowing your customers — where they are coming from and what kinds of […]

Shades of meaning

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It’s my privilege to work with a team of talented designers. One of them — Rachel Getsinger, Pivot’s senior design lead — takes the lead on many of our logo and branding projects. Recently, she has introduced Color Theory 101 to our clients when we present logo color options. In this month’s article, I’m passing […]

October 2019

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Learn how retail nurseries are bringing customers into the stores during the off-season. Plus, Christmas tree farmers who weathered through the rough recession share their outlook on the future, and Oregon State University talks about their new hazelnut cultivars. In this issue: Retail for the holidays: Garden centers transform themselves into destinations for fall and […]

Retail for the holidays

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Garden centers transform themselves into destinations for fall and Christmas The months leading up to December can lead to a slowdown in business at many garden centers, as gardening activity decreases. But some retailers have made these months quite profitable, and without going too far off mission, if at all. After all, nurseries and garden […]

Retailers’ Choice Awards™ at Farwest 2019

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Retailers’ Choice Awards™ at Farwest 2019 were presented to thirteen exhibiting firms for awards during a presentation on the Farwest Solutions Center. The Garden Center Group’s Danny Summers and Christina Salwitz lead the retailer search. Products were selected specifically for garden retailers in search of the best new products both live goods and hard goods […]

Exciting, unusual and underused shrubs

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Trees frame the garden, perennials clothe it, but shrubs give it the bones that bring everything together. Yet so many of these essential plants never make it into the landscape. Shrubs like the exquisite Camellia × williamsii ‘Night Rider’ from New Zealand with its deep maroon red flowers and brilliant, reddish-purple new growth or vibrant, […]

Green from the ground up

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  Whether the customers are landscapers or retailers, the most sought-after characteristics in ground cover plants for pathways and walkways are the same. People want low-growing, low-maintenance, drought-tolerant, evergreen, flowering, noninvasive, deer-tolerant, durable and — gaining in popularity — rabbit-resistant plants. And it would be nice if they could also help with the dishes! Customers […]

Where gardeners turn for answers

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Garden centers typically can offer their customers several advantages that big box stores can’t fully duplicate. One of these is the ability to provide customers with valid, localized information about the challenges they face. When I ask my neighbors, friends and other gardeners where they would go if they had a question about a problem […]

Lessons from a rebrand

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Tillamook Creamery — and the cheese, ice cream, yogurt, and butter it produces — is an Oregon Coast institution with international reach. Its products are available around the globe. I’m passionate about Tillamook cheese. It’s the only cheese I will buy, and their ice cream is a treat. Recently, in celebration of their 110th anniversary, […]