A Monarch’s Retreat

DeWayne’s Home & Garden Showplace of Selma, North Carolina is the third prize winner in the 2008 Perennials Marketing Contest. Plant Publicity Holland and the Perennial Plant Association, co-sponsors of the contest, offer their hearty congratulations to DeWayne’s staff members Lewis Carver, growing green team leader and Marcia Woodall, marketing coordinator for their prize winning entry. The butterfly garden themed display was located in a high traffic area at the rear of the garden center’s greenhouse. Of prime importance to the display were plant size, texture and color. Trees and shrubs came first, to provide the ‘bones’ of the display and a backdrop for the airy plants that butterflies prefer. “This also showed our customers how they can incorporate these types of plants within their existing landscape in order to create their own perennial butterfly gardens,” explained Ms. Woodall. The display garden also featured a meandering walkway, allowing customers to experience, up close and personal, the garden’s texture, depth and plant diversity, for example, the combination of roses and perennials for all season color. Ms. Woodall went on to say, “It was amazing to see how much customers were enjoying this space and how many of them bought the plants we featured.” Merchandise from the garden center’s gift shop and outdoor living departments accented the display. “Over the years we’ve learned that customers not only like to see, but need to be shown how to incorporate unique garden elements into their own designs, like the gazing balls, benches and fountains that we used. Hmmm. Is it a fountain, or a container garden? “Due to the early summer drought conditions,” Ms. Woodall continued, “and because we like to advocate responsible use of precious resources, the tiered fountain at the entrance to the display wasn’t filled with water.  Instead, we filled it with plants, inadvertently discovering that this was a terrific way to get height into a plant display. The bonus being that more than one customer walked out with a tiered fountain, explaining excitedly that this was going to be their new container garden!” Simple, bright, custom signs, located not only in the Monarch’s Retreat area, but throughout the garden center wherever perennials were the focus, educated customers about June being ‘Perennial Gardening Month’. And smaller price and information signage such as ‘drought tolerant’ and ‘fun in the sun’ were strategically placed to further inform customers of the plant preferences. “The butterfly garden design received a lot of attention from our customers during the month of June,” concluded Ms. Woodall, “as a result, we’re considering recreating it on an annual basis.”