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.

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.

UK Landscape Today claims 52,000 readership

I have been looking over UK Landscape Today newspaper today via a .pdf page.

On the face of it, the publication looks good although I would say, and I am sure Hort Week's lawyers have cast their eye over it, it is very Hort Week'esque.

The Landscaper Magazine switches to 'online'

The Landscaper Magazine has probably been the most astute of the trade mag's and adopted an online version in a bid to retain it's audience and advertisers.

I notice from their website, that there are three months worth of online versions available, using the flip over media format, that gives the impression you are reading a real magazine.

Emap posts losses amid concerns of a deepening crisis

Alun Cathcart, the Emap chairman, may have used upbeat comments like "signs of improvement" but things continue to look bleak for the cars to gardening magazine and business services to radio behemoth.

Redundancies started back in 2006 as the group promised to chop £20 million from it's cost based. A £40 million restructuring which started in November 2006 has failed to halt the decline in the media giants fortunes.

Landscape and Urban Design - is this the future format for horticulture magazines?

How do you prefer to take your gardening news?

The old timers are rigidly stuck to the glossy mag but the newbies are embracing the digital age.

What if you are able to combine the two and have a printable on line magazine?

I received an email from Landscape & Urban Design yesterday but didn't have enough time to write about it. What caught my eye wasn't necessarily the contents of Landscape & Urban Design but the way in which the website delivers it's content.

I spent a few minutes flicking through the on line pages and it got me thinking. Any horticulture publication can produce a magazine in this format that gives the reader a same experience as flicking through a publication that you would buy off the shelf

Is the Horticulture printed publication industry in deep trouble?

Take me back just ten years and I would not have been referring to the internet for industry news.

No, ten years ago I would have been happy to sit in my van, cup of steaming hot tea from the flask and a haslet and pickle sandwich reading Horticulture Week.

If I wanted to advertise for a managerial position I too would turn to Hortweek in the hope of casting my net far and wide to attract the right candidate.

Oh how times have changed and I really feel that decline may have set in for established printed magazines such as Hortweek, The Landscaper Magazine, and Greenkeeper International - these three I would call the premier magazine of choice for their respective industries.

The elements of organic gardening, by Prince Charles

Keep an eye out for our future king's book 'The elements of organic gardening'.
The soon to be sixty year old has worked with co author Stephanie Donaldson - the editor of Country Living.

Charles has been a log term advocate of organic and  practices what he preaches on his Gloucestershire estate, Highgrove.

A Compost Kind of Girl

Bryony Hill, the wife of BBC football pundit, became a serious gardener twenty years ago when she moved to Sussex and became hooked after she walked out into the garden for the first time in her wellies and night gown.

Bryony says the garden at the time was little more than a lawn and a few beds and she wanted to expand on it a bit more, something that Jimmy was not too keen on. Jimmy was away working so much so Bryony stealthily remove the lawn bit by bit and created borders and planted new shrubs.

Turning to the small ads for help Bryony took on a a gardener but soon realised, after the asparagus ended up on the bonfire that it was probably better to go it alone.

The Art Of Garden Photography

Anyone that has ever taken a photograph knows that never are two snaps ever the same. I bet that award winning photographers who have a image printed that symbolises an event of moment in time or captures that special effect is often one image in a volley of several. All the others would not cause a second glimpse and would be cosigned to the 'cutting room floor'.

Being in the right place at the right time is the key and that is one of the things that this book by Clive Nichols tries to instils in its reader.

Gardening Mags and Garden Answers