Landscape and horticulture expert

Creating 'desire lines' in your garden business model

Landscapers, gardeners and garden designers will be more than familiar with desire lines and the impact they have on planning a garden or managing an existing scheme that may suffer with the adverse effects of a desire line.

I want to take this theory forward a little and apply the same thinking to how we conduct our own business and how, with a little thought, we can create desire lines that allow you to sell your products and services without using a metaphorical battering ram to channel a potential customer into a direction that they do not want to go.

A day in the life of Landscape Juice

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but in this case, I am not so sure.

I have been noticing that this site has been featuring regularly in my search results and I am unhappy with it.

I have spent hours and hours and hours building up my site into a respectable gardening and landscaping resource.

I am really unhappy that someone, who cannot be bothered to take the conventional blogging route and hack away at the keyboard after researching their own material, just posts my feeds into a Google Blogger site and is reaping the rewards from it as if it was their own.

Why Yellow Pages is dead - long live the gardening blog

Can anyone tell me when the last time you went to that whopping great big yellow book and made a list of potential gardeners or landscapers that you wanted to call from it?

My company placed adverts with Yellow Pages to the tune of £4,000 per year - yes that is a massive £76.00 per week and, if you take an employees wages into consideration, I was employing one person just to pay for this advert.

The Landscaper Magazine is planning exciting changes to it's website.

I was delighted today that David Curtis of the Landscaper Magazine left a comment regarding my recent post titled "The Landscaper Magazine switches to 'online'"

It demonstrated to me that they cared about their product and also cared about the market place in which they were pitching their wares.

I have made some fairly big claims with my post "Is the Horticulture printed publication industry in deep trouble?", which means that editors are normally reluctant to enter into dialogue.

The greatest test from Mother Nature

I could not let this post from Richard Loader pass with out linking to it. We are going through a tough Spring for sure and the 'irrational exuberance' that seemed to engulf the world climate change commentators has subsided - thank heavens.

Richard has posted a great picture of Fritillaria meleagris trapped in the snow. Never the less, the Fritillaria still manages to stand erect and graceful in her magnificent splendour.

Ratings 'soar' for Landscape Juice

I have to say a big 'Thank You' to all of my regular readers for your support of my blog. I have to say also, thank you for the encouragement from the many private emails and chats I have with several of you via email and Skype. There are times when I wondered if it was all worth the effort and now I know it is.

I am still not going to reveal the numbers but you can see from the graph, Landscape Juice monthly stats continue to rise impressively and the last three months especially has seen fantastic growth.

Are gardening blogs being misused?

I have talked about how the gardening market needs to change in the coming years to cater for evolution in the consumer market.

However, a new dilemma is facing the industry in the way that 'new age' communications is having an effect on the media landscape.

I am referring mainly to the vast array of gardening blogs that are available to the consumer - I use the term consumer in the broadest sense.

The great Garden Monkey Exposé

Before I move back onto garden and landscaping matters I thought I would conduct a little poll.

I while back I threatened to expose the identity of the Garden Monkey but didn't do it. I am still willing to let the secret lie if that is the consensus, but, first of all, I thought I would ask you, the readers, if you would like to know who it is or would you like the author to remain a secret?

The Garden Monkey - a 'Rock and Roll Swindle' amongst gardening blogs?

I used to be a fan of the Gardening Monkey and what I thought was a different approach to garden blogging. humorous, witty and a little oddball but hey, that kind of reflected my personality a little so that was cool.

But, and there is always a but! - I waited for that explosion of prophetic gardening advice and little tit bits that would really help us all out; yet nothing came!

There is no doubt that the author can jumble up the alphabet in a way that most of us mere mortals cannot even begin and sometimes there is a hint of comic humour coming through, but, and there is always another 'but' gardening definitely seems to be off the agenda!

The Lawn Society grows legs

I am back from my trip to the UK having spent a couple of days brainstorming with Mike Seaton at Grass Clippings and The Lawn Company.

Mike is also the founder of The Lawn Society and we spent a considerable amount of time on building a strategy for taking the The Lawn Society forward.

Landscape Juice tops the UK mags again!

Have you ever wondered if the glossy magazines have taken gardening blogs seriously?

As you know, I am not necessarily a great fan of the glossy magazine business models and I feel, with the right content and personalisation, that the gardening blog will one day see their subscriber numbers tumble.

Grow Veg online - vegetable plot planning software

Vegetable gardeners are patiently (or impatiently for some) waiting for the weather to improve, so that they can get onto the soil and begin some of this seasons preparation.

The seed catalogues have been consulted and