What's 'in' doors

Photos courtesy of WholesaleFairyGardens.com

Indoor plants breathe life into our insulated environments, and garden centers that carve out room to stock a houseplant selection and some of today’s sought-after arrangements (think fairy gardens) can see real green during slower times of the year.

The key to successfully finding homes for houseplants is to think like your customers, stock the trends, mind the plant size and be sure there’s someone on staff dedicated to caring for these indoor dwellers.

“We create our own strengths and weaknesses in retail, and houseplants seem to be that category where some [centers] have started to feel they aren’t good at,” says Tom Courtright, Orchard Nursery and Florist, Lafayette, Calif.

Sure, caring for indoor plants requires time and commitment. And it helps to have a buyer who can handpick selections to ensure high quality, and who keeps up on the latest trends. But Courtright finds that the more he supplies, the more consumers demand indoor plants. And the more space he clears to showcase houseplants, the more his cash register rings.

“When we stopped selling patio furniture, we wound up with a lot of space on our front porch,” Courtright says of the real estate devoted to plants that thrive indoors. “For eight months out of the year, we fill the front porch of the nursery with houseplants, and we get enough light out there and can watch them easily. So we pretty much double our inventory.”

And then he does double the sales in houseplants.

Think small for big revenues. But what’s moving off the shelves today? Not your lofty 16-inch containers that consume a corner of a living room. Courtright says he still stocks a handful of 14- and 16-inch potted houseplants, but they tend to “just sort of decorate the place.” “Hopefully, but by the end of the season, we sell them,” he says.

Instead, customers want a pint-sized plant. Michael Clayton, co-owner of Western Garden Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, says he can’t keep enough 4-inch container plants in stock. “It’s the small stuff,” he says.

The same goes for miniatures, in particular, fairy gardens that fit in 12-inch containers or smaller. “I’ve had more people come up to me and say, ‘I want a fairy garden,’ this year than in all the years I’ve been in the business,” Clayton says.

Meanwhile, interesting indoor plant treatments such as terrariums and living walls appeal to those plant-lovers that are seeking something different for the home.

Ultimately, selling indoor plants is a matter of anticipating customer demand and stocking to suit the buyer, Clayton adds. “I always ask myself the question: What would my customers expect me to have?”

And for Clayton, the answer is most definitely indoor plants.

Here are a few selections that are flying off the shelves and how to position them for “adoption” by a caring customer.

Photos courtesy of WholesaleFairyGardens.com

Stock it: Fairy Gardens.
Tiny, magical garden settings arranged in pots contain all of the elements of a dream garden—an arbor, a winding stepping stone path, tiny animal figurines and even a gazing ball. Jan Wallace, president of Sugarcreek Garden Center in Fort Mill, S.C., might fill a fairy garden with topiary rosemary, a thimble-sized bistro table with a checkerboard atop and a wooden fence planted with angel vine.

Some customers buy premade fairy gardens. Others choose among the selection of tiny things, both living and purely ornamental (fairies, frogs), and build their own. Some arrangements may contain plants such as boxwood, lithodora or Irish moss. “The little arbors sell really well,” Wallace notes.

Fairy gardens are less labor intensive to create than terrariums, and easier to care for, Courtright points out.

Sell it. At Sugarcreek Garden Center, customers can sign up for a fairy garden workshop and learn to create their own at home. This inspires guests to experiment with the various products the garden center stocks for these miniature arrangements, Wallace says.

Photos courtesy of WholesaleFairyGardens.com

Stock it: Terrariums
They’re mini ecosystems, and they’re selling fast at garden centers. Terrariums come in a variety of sizes and can be open or closed, globe-shaped or planted within slender birdcage-like stands. The container options for terrariums are vast, including jugs, jars, fish bowls and bell jars — any glass container that will envelope the little landscape.

The challenge with terrariums is the labor required to create them in-house, Courtright says. He describes the large, jug terrariums his staff used to make. They’d use chopsticks to perfectly place the plants and objects inside. His store sold bubble ball terrariums by the dozen.

Clayton leaves most of the labor to customers who are interested in making their own terrariums. Fairy gardens trump terrariums in sales, but his center is moving plenty of these glass landscapes out the doors.

Sell it. Rather than tying up too much labor to preassemble terrariums for sale, a display at Clayton’s Western Garden Center shows customers how terrariums come together. This appeals to the DIY crowd. “You definitely have to set one up and have the ingredients around it,” Clayton says.

Stock it: Living Walls. Indoor living wall products, such as Wooly Pockets, help create a lovely indoor garden, planted with varieties that range in texture and color. “The pocket reservoirs prevent walls from getting wet, and they’re a nice accent in a home or office,” Wallace says.

She’ll fill the pockets with dracaena, bromeliad, euphorbia—perhaps a little colancha. Of course, trailers perform well and fill out the wall.

Sell it. Generally speaking, there isn’t necessarily a season for indoor plants because they thrive in the home year-round. But there certainly are times when customers are thinking about greening up their indoor spaces, namely after Christmas once the tree comes down. “They have a big, empty space and they think, ‘What can we put there?’” Wallace says.

As for promoting indoor plants, including living walls, Wallace spreads awareness about improving indoor air quality. “We expect our indoor plant department to grow larger because we are getting a lot of office requests because plants improve the air quality and promote employee productivity,” she says.