The worst salesperson in the world...

About two years after we bought Bluebell Cottage Gardens I had the following conversation with my (now ex) husband:

Me: ‘Something I’ve realised - I don’t actually like selling plants’.

Him - looks up from laptop: ‘You’re joking. Why did you buy a plant nursery if you don’t like selling plants?’

Me - trying to formulate a sentence that doesn’t make me look a total idiot: ‘I love growing them, propagating, seeing them growing in the polytunnels and looking lovely out on the nursery. And I’m happy that people come and buy them. I’m just not that interested in actually selling them myself.’

Him - frowning: ‘Well it’s your job now, of course you have to sell them.’

Me: ‘I know, and that’s why we grow them - it’s just it doesn’t really do anything for me - the final exchanging of plants for cash. I think I’ll hire someone to do that for me.’

Him - returning to laptop: ‘That makes no sense - you can’t afford to hire anyone. And anyway, I thought this was what you wanted.’

I said nothing more and recruited someone who loved selling plants as soon as I could :-)

What I said was and still is true though, in a way that perhaps I can explain better now. I have a very strong drive to create, to start something, to make something happen, learn something new. I love creating show gardens, making displays in marquees, writing stuff, making things out of stained glass, flying somewhere new (see previous post), figuring out how to get my fingers around a tricky little phrase on the piano…

By the time our plants end up on the nursery benches, my work is done. I have spotted the plant somewhere, read about it, found a source, propagated it, grown it on, written a description and got to know it as it fights its way through the weather here. All that remains is to find it a new home.

And when it comes to helping my plants find new homes, it turns out that I am terrible at it. I worry that it won’t thrive in the spot a would-be customer has painstakingly described. Or that they won’t like how it looks in winter, or that the colour won’t quite match what they expected, or that they won’t water it, or will over-water it or in some way be disappointed with how it turns out. Or there may be so many possible answers to their original ‘what shall I plant’ question that I don’t know where to start.

My lovely team here have no such difficulties - they know how well grown our plants are, that they are tried and tested in their own gardens as well as mine. So I try and keep out of the way, quietly and happily listening in as they enthuse about the plants and our customers steadily fill their trolleys.

But our plants are growing fast now and a few are starting to flower, like the lovely old variety Primula ‘Wanda’ above. We’ve all been potting and propagating madly for the past few weeks the nursery too and the nursery is so full we have almost no space left.

So, to create more space, to grow yet more plants, I’ve created three little collections for you to contemplate - you can click on the collection pictures above or the links below.

Collection of cottage garden plants

Collection of airy/naturalistic plants

Collection of plants for sunny/dry borders

Happy growing!

Sue

x