‘Painting with flowers’: Simplifying landscape design
They say necessity is the mother of invention, and it’s true for Plant By Number (PBN), a customizable design tool that simplifies garden design for homeowners. Founder Alexander Betz has been in landscaping for about 15 years, running a landscaping company in New Jersey that does a lot of installations. But when he first started, he said the intricacies of the landscape designs sometimes slowed down his crews.
“Sometimes [my crews] had a hard time following the plans and getting the exact plants and the placement correct. I spent most of my time on the jobsite, putting the plants where they needed to go, then the guys would install them.”
At that time, he said they were using landscape fabric for the majority of their installations to help with weed suppression.
“One day it occurred to me, if I had the plant already marked out and the guys knew which one to associate with each number, I wouldn’t have to be there the whole time, showing them where to put the plant. So I rolled out a big thing of landscape fabric, took some sidewalk chalk and scaled out one of our designer files — and something really interesting happened. Not only did I not need to be on-site anymore, but they were actually getting the installation done about 50% faster than before.
“It cuts out all the measurements, which, for a more complex design, can be really time consuming, especially if you need to really nail the spacing. That’s where the genesis of the project came from.”
Testing the Waters
Betz said PBN soft-launched in 2023 with a direct-to-consumer model with minimal advertising to find out what consumers were looking for. This model “was the fastest way for us to get feedback so we could find out exactly what the customer wants, so when we made our push into brick and mortar, we had a product that we knew was going to resonate with [garden retailers’] customer base.”
He said PBN uses Green Promise Farms, which is part of Prides Corner Farms, to handle plant fulfillment and has been satisfied with their service.
“We’ve sent hundreds and hundreds of plants this year, and had only one complaint, because [a package] got stuck in Atlanta on the Fourth of July in 105 °F heat — but it wasn’t a customer complaint. I was actually sending that down to my brother-in-law, so at least it wasn’t a customer. …He was planning a garden. We were sending him some really unique natives that are hard to find in retail, but unfortunately, they got stuck in the distribution center in Atlanta, and it was about 100 °F that weekend.”
Retail Ready
Betz said PBN is “in a growth stage” and looking to partner with both retail garden centers and professional contractors who may or may not have designers on staff.
“We can help out with the design aspect of everything, as well as deliver a product that their crews can install with very little training. It’s like paint by number, but on a 100x scale — painting with flowers. Because with landscape design, a lot of the principles of flow and rhythm and symmetry all come from the base layout, and a lot of what we’ve done is focused on creating these smart templates. It really expedites not only the design process, but the installation process at the same time.”
For retail, PBN offers customizable design templates, including those the size of placemats, which map out a specific type of garden, such as a pollinator garden or cut flower garden, as well as privacy gardens with hedging. The files are customizable, Betz said, “so if larger garden centers have designers on staff and wanted to create their own layouts to sell in-store, we can easily convert their files and print them out to order and send them right to them.”
Betz said PBN also plans to provide in-store design classes for garden centers to host over the winter months to not only promote the design templates, but also offer additional revenue streams during the winter.
“The point is to have two touch points for that customer: They come in during the winter, when things are slow, and then they can design a garden in the in-store class, and then come back in the spring to pick up their garden map and all the plants they chose to fill it. That’s something we’re doing that’s pretty unique — trying to empower garden centers to host these classes and giving them a way to do it that’s fun and interactive, but also helps them merchandise when the customers come back in the spring.”
Betz sees PBN’s garden maps as a way to increase customers’ purchases as well. “They get to merchandise not only the garden maps themselves, but the plants, mulch, fertilizer, drip line irrigation for more sustainable watering practices, solar lights. … For the garden centers, it’s like the ultimate merchandising tool.”
Making Landscape Design Accessible
Like any work of art, garden themes can vary by person and property and range from the traditional to the funky. Some of their online bestsellers include a moon garden and “a golf garden that featured the hydrangea ‘Eclipse’ and some black mondo grass and coral bells — a really unique looking garden that resonated well with our customers.”
Betz said they’re currently planning to hold classes with themes ranging from cottage and vegetable gardens to “funky fairy tale gardens” and native plant gardens.
“It’s really about making professional landscape design more affordable and more accessible to a larger audience. We’re really excited about going into garden centers because we think that there’s a lot of value — not only for their customers, but also for the garden centers themselves.”
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