The Garden Room Print
Saturday, 01 December 2007 03:00
Showing customers how one contrasting color of pottery and garden furniture can bring life to garden design is a terrific example of cross-merchandising.Briggs Nursery, North Alteboro, Maryland

Briggs Nursery in North Alteboro, Maryland is the final profile in our yearlong series about the Top Ten Winners of the 2006 Perennials Marketing Contest sponsored by Plant Publicity Holland, the Perennial Plant Association and Branch Smith Publishing.

Sarah Fougere, Perennials Manager at Briggs explained, "We strive to create effective displays that will inspire customers to take our designs home to their own yards, and ultimately to make shopping easier for them. We used this philosophy in creating our Garden Room display from which customers could take elements of the design and apply them to their own gardening needs."

Light wispy grasses offset the more substantial presence of furniture and pottery.
In creating the Garden Room, Sarah focused on two key rules of merchandising. Selecting a high traffic area of the nursery - on the main path to the perennial area, and a concept that drew customers to the display - brightly colored lattice walls that separated the display from the surrounding merchandise.

"The lattice provided contrasting colors to the plant material," explained Sarah, "and also a place to hang signage which further defined perennials as the main products on display."

Every display at Briggs is also a cross-merchandising opportunity. "It's important that customers come to us not only for plants," said Sarah, "but also for ideas about how to design their gardens. We want to show them interesting ways in which to combine different items, like pottery and furniture, with their plant material. Our intention is for customers to think outside the box of the standard perennial garden."

The final elements of an effective display are the design details. In Briggs' Garden Room, offsetting the snazzy lattice, were light, wispy grasses and the more substantial presence of the furniture and pottery. Drifts of color led the viewer's eyes to the various elements of the display with the color yellow repeated throughout, tying everything together.

Congratulations to Sarah and Briggs Nursery for this wonderful submission to the 2006 Perennials Marketing Contest.
 

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