This Florida garden center's busiest days are in the fall, not spring. Find out how they do it

© Photos courtesy of Erik Dietl-Friedli

“Best day ever!”  

If I say that to most garden center folks, they’ll reply, “Yeah, Mother’s Day rocks!” 

But what if I said, “We had our best day ever in October”? And then added, “And here in South Florida, we don’t even get a traditional fall”?

It’s true. We create a fall experience with temperatures soaring in the 90s. 

Over 17 years, Flamingo Road Nursery in Davie, Florida, about 35 miles north of Miami, has tweaked and changed our Fall Festival to where October is now our biggest month. It has been now for the past 10 years. Careful analysis and planning led the way. 

When we first decided to create a fall festival, I called upon my experience on Long Island at Martin Viette Nurseries and Hicks Nurseries. Both hosted multi-weekend events to capture fall, expose non-gardeners to the garden center and offer a great experience. 

I knew that hayrides were important. And pumpkins. And apple cider. 

I remember saying to Flamingo Road Nursery owner Jim Dezell, “We need to give them three things: something to do, something to eat and drink, and something to buy and take home.” And that was the start of what became the largest family activity in our county that draws from Miami in the south to West Palm Beach in the north. 

We decided to run our festival over six weekends, ending the weekend after Halloween. Fall is a traditional planting time in South Florida, so we gave each weekend a garden theme based on what we want people to buy.

And we decided to create something different to kick it off. Everyone plants tomatoes in the vegetable garden. It almost seems redundant. I contacted a local grower and had them grow 25 to 30 varieties of peppers for us. We were kicking off our festival with Pepperpalooza! 

The other weekends we chose were Super Pollinator Spectacular, Tomato Fest, Fruitopia Weekend, Container Garden Weekend and the finale: Parade Of Color, a celebration of the earnest start of planting flowers for winter. Again, we’re South Florida! 

Hayrides were a bigger hit than we ever imagined. The first year we held the event, we created a traffic jam more than a mile long in front of the garden center. We offered horse-drawn hayrides and ran two wagons. The line grew to two hours long. 

We also had face painters, with a line more than an hour long. Adding painters only created more lines more than an hour long. We had a petting zoo with a long line, too. 

Because we celebrate fall with 90-degree weather, we replaced apple cider with frozen cider. We added popcorn, chips, water, soda, cookies and assorted treats. The concession line grew to 30 minutes long. Visitors took over the church parking lot next door. Cars parked out on the busy road and stretched half a mile in both directions. We’d created a well-intentioned monster. 

At the end of that first year, we knew we needed to create a better experience, have more control over the crowd and convert more people into customers. 

We added menu signs above the registers, so people could decide what they’re buying before reaching the counter. We eliminated activities that created long lines, like face painting and the petting zoo. We replaced the horses with tractor-pulled hayrides and built the hayrides by decorating and connecting nursery trailers, so we could go from 20 per ride to 70.

To compensate for what we removed, we added photo opportunities and a small kiddie maze. We also limited the menus to facilitate faster decisions and only served items we could prep beforehand. This became our formula for the next number of years. 

Around COVID, we knew we had to be even better at crowd control. The festival was impacting garden center sales. It was hard to shop with a crowd blocking access to product. Huge families were coming, but few were participating. 

We decided to move the festival to the very back of our property. Between the festival area and the garden center is a parking lot with 250 spaces. The church next door allows us to use a field behind it for an additional 300. We decided to run the festival every day of the week to accommodate families with toddlers and school groups. 

We started charging admission. Each admission includes two tickets that can be used toward an activity or treat. Hayrides, sugar pumpkins with complimentary painting and frozen apple cider are the top items people use tickets for. The only things people have to purchase extra are face pumpkins, carving kits, scarecrows and a few treats or handheld food. We price pumpkins in permanent marker by the stem and go through eight tractor trailers of them. 

Our goal is to keep it simple, replace lines with tickets, create an experience that lasts about an hour and makes them want to then visit the garden center and be exposed to product. Most, because of small children, do not come into the garden center. All of this helps with turnover in the parking lot and eliminating traffic on the road. Local police at the entrance also help eliminate traffic bottlenecks. 

Constantly analyzing processes and product offerings has created a most successful and profitable festival for us — and a more enjoyable experience for our guests. Ever see a kid carrying a painted sugar pumpkin with a big smile on their face? Go ask them about it.  

Know what they’ll say? “Best day ever!”

Erik Dietl-Friedli has worked in retail gardening for 35 years and is currently the head buyer at Flamingo Road Nursery in Davie, Florida. He began his career at Martin Viette Nurseries and Hicks Nurseries on Long Island focusing on buying, visual merchandising, developing seasonal events and creating dynamic product programs. He's also the co-founder of Garden Center Consultants.