A New Hue for the New Year
I don’t believe in traditional New Year’s resolutions.
Despite all my best intentions, those clichéd promises to myself to lose weight or volunteer more have ended up backfiring more than they’ve helped mold a better me.
Usually, neglecting the resolutions we’ve made after that initial burst of can-do energy results, at most, in the same flabby midsection, wasted money or a pang of disappointment. There’s little incentive to stick with them in the first place after all, we’re only letting ourselves down in the end. So this year, why not up the stakes and hold ourselves to an even higher standard by making a resolution in the interest of something bigger?
Our Resolution: Embrace Sustainability
Sustainability has been a huge factor in our industry for a lot longer than we’ve had a buzzword to use in talking about it. The whole concept is a little like a pointillist painting: If you try to focus too closely on the minutiae at first, all you see is a blurry, overwhelming snowstorm of ideas, but if you step back a little, the big, beautiful picture starts to become more clear.
Lawn & Garden Retailer has long been exploring how to help you become more aware of how your business practices affect the environment. We’ve been outlining steps you can take to lessen your impact while staying viable as a business. We don’t do this because it’s the latest trend. We define sustainability as meeting the needs of the present without preventing future generations from doing the same, and that’s essential to the survival of our industry.
But now that sustainability is a buzzword, our staff thinks it’s our responsibility to lay a foundation for our readers from the ground up, starting with basic principles that will help spark a dialogue among garden center owners, then working our way up to practical solutions that will help you put the ideas from that dialogue into use. Sustainability is more than a vague idea; it’s a smart business practice.
Building Blocks
In this issue, Jonathan Bardzik of the American Nursery & Landscape Association (ANLA) kicks things off with a bold perspective on sustainability (page 78). In the article, he describes the three life stages of a hot-button issue: anxiety, activity and lifestyle incorporation. We’re moving into the final stage now, he says, and it’s time to help customers integrate sustainable practices into their regular routines.
Dan Heims of Terra Nova Nurseries (page 84) highlights xeriscaping and drought-tolerant plants. With drought plaguing areas of the Southeast and cities enforcing more water-use restrictions, it’s important that we help our clientele adapt with beautiful plants that will grow efficiently with less water and maintenance.
And in this issue, we’re thrilled to introduce a feature by nationally renowned garden expert P. Allen Smith. His first column (page 17) emphasizes the importance of reinforcing your reputation of expertise. As consumers seek refuge in their yards as lifestyle centers with more than just gardens and a grill, you have to be their source of inspiration. By the same token, if you’re taking steps to be more sustainable carrying the best new products and offering your professional guidance customers will want to follow your lead.
Strength in Numbers
But you don’t have to do it alone. Though the idea of sustainability’s been around for some time, it’s still fairly new territory where implementation is concerned. So I challenge you to take steps this year to make your business more sustainable, but I also encourage you to seek the support of your fellow garden center owners and educate yourselves through this magazine and any other source. There are a huge number of websites and blogs dedicated to this issue, and you never know what tips you might find useful.
We all know there’s strength in numbers. That old resolution to lose weight might have been more effective if I’d had a friend keeping my hand out of that cookie jar, and you’re bound to be more successful embracing sustainability when you know others are in the same boat. This is the year for us to turn this industry a different shade of green.
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