A visitor

I have a problem with writers I admire. It is probably because writing is an unfulfilled ambition, but I just cannot behave naturally around them.

So when Anna Pavord, author of "The Tulip" and many other books and gardening correspondent for The Independent newspaper, wrote to say she would like to visit I went into a bit of a panic.

Friends and family assumed that it was that I was worrying abut the state of the garden but no - it was much more serious than that.

I am pretty much immune to celebrity culture - usually I meet "famous" people and neglect to notice that they are "famous" - being on tv just doesn't do it for me.

But writers, now that is quite different . . . either I am propelled into being incredibly boring - and I mean incredibly - I once talked to Adam Nicolson about slugs and ways to exterminate them for a full 20 minutes - or I am reduced to a squeak. Very generous friends have in the past introduced me to Candia McWilliam, Claudia Roden, and Naomi Wolf and have been rewarded by me becoming suddenly mute. They don't bother now.

So my panic was worry about which route I would chose - tedium or tongue-tied.

However - neither happened (well I might have been boring but I kept away from the subject of slugs). Anna Pavord is just very, very interesting and interested - it was a delight to meet her and we shall be in The Independent in September.

Country Living

Hoooo! Woooo! as my youngest would say.
2 posts in one day.
The excuse is my Country Living magazine dropped through the door and there we are - one of our painted handle baskets in the Emporium section!

Busy bees

This week Sally and I have been getting our fingers out and buzzing all over the place to let people know we are here. It is something we should have done 3 weeks ago.

When I began to sell from the house 2 years ago we had a very specific group of people who came each week - we were on the routine run between the Friday farmshop at France Farm and Killearn jumping beans. They were largely people that I knew socially through toddler groups and their friends.

A couple of weeks ago I began to notice that we no longer get this 11 am rush, so on Friday Sally and I sat down to think about the whys and wherefores, going through all the ex-11 am regulars. Some now come later on the way back from the afternoon school run - their children have simply outgrown toddlerhood. Others have returned to full time work and are not about at all on a Friday. Some have extended their maternity leaves, or returned to college, or taken up some arty non-paying job, they are down a wage and without cash to spend on flowers except for special occasions.

It all made me realise that I have been too complacent - we are always generally busy so I haven't been thinking about who our customers are and how we can continue to get them coming back. We have done a big effort on leafleting neighbouring villages to recruit a new generation of those toddler Mums and have our thinking caps on about how we can be more convenient for the rest.

I am very bad at this sort of thing, so it is a good job that I have Sally working with me. I would be the man with the better designed mousetrap waiting for people to beat a path to the door.

A post about post . . .

As a couple of people responded to my comment yesterday about the cost of postage I thought that I would open out the topic a bit and ask for some feedback both from other small mail order businesses and from people who buy mail order.

What can small businesses do about the cost of posting things?

I do a mailing two or three times a year - at the start of the season, sometimes at the end of the season and before Christmas. Ideally I would like to cut this down to one mailing a year but I do feel that, from a business point of view, a clutch of pretty postcards in the hand is better than any number of e-mails. They can be stuck to a fridge, handed on to friends etc. etc. . . .I hope. Am I right? Do people relish getting a bright hand addressed envelope (Or might they be disappointed that it isn't a birthday card with a fat cheque inside?)

There is also the issue of paper. I use recycled paper for all letters and print-outs but I do not use recycled envelopes as I couldn't source them in bright colours and I could not afford the cost of recycled postcards. This is not as good as it should be. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Then there is the issue of mailing out orders. We thought long and hard about this with the website and decided on a flat fee as, when I am buying things, I like to be able to do a transaction in one go without faffing about with e-mails (spot the stressed mother). We pitched this at £4.95, sort of on a par with Cath Kidston, Plumo or the White Company which are the type of catalogues my customers tend to read.

The average actual cost of the mailings I have done so far has been £7.50 (and that is postage, not boxes or tape) so really I can't afford to bring it down any lower. None has been under the £4.95.

What is other people's experience of this - do you look at the postage and think mmmmm, maybe I'll pop into the shops in town? Are people more au fait with postage costs in our post e-bay world? Should I be conning couriers into thinking I am a big company?

That aside - I am on a high today - the first batch of letters went out yesterday, would have arrived with people today, and already I have had phonecalls from a high percentage of last year's subscription customers re-ordering for this year. If I could work out how to insert one of those smily face icons, I would.

Species tulips

I have never grown species tulips before. I have grown perhaps 100 different varieties of garden tulips but this is the first year that I have fallen prey to the charms of the species.

Part of the remit of our business is to grow things that you just can't get anywhere else. I could go to any flower wholesaler this lunchtime and come back with trays of Muscari armenium (grape hyacinth), Narcissi tete a tete and white, pink and blue hyacinth. So could any florist.

But you can't go anywhere, bar perhaps a specialist nursery, and get pots of flowering species tulips. They are the complete opposite of the lowest common denominator plant.

The tulips in the photograph are Tulipa turkestana about 6 inches tall with up to 7 flowers on a stem. They are not one of the parents of garden tulips as breeders have so far failed to get them to hybridise with other varieties (think of the flowers you could get if you could get an elegant multi headed version of Queen of the Night) but rather grow in the wild on stony slopes in the Mediterranean and central Asia.


I sold almost all my flowers last week but have saved a few for myself and have planted them into an old enamel nursery mug to enjoy in the dining room.

Yesterday Di Overton at Designer's Block did a lovely post about us. She is an even more avid blogger than I am and is putting together a really great archive of inspirational pictures and contacts.

New publicity

Today I went to deliver the artwork for my new business cards to the printer.

Last year I handed out a lot of cards at the Country Living show and I have been amazed at how many people have obviously kept them and got in touch many months later.

Having something visual seems to work for me as people stick it to their fridge because they like the photo.

As I am now going to be doing mail order - and as I have almost run out of my old cards - I thought that we needed a change. As the business does lots of different things I have gone for 4 different cards - one general, one weddings, one mail order and one with a map to show where we are. They can either be given out seperately or as a group with a punched hole and ribbon.


I'm also intending to have a blank postcard so that I can use it as a gift card/compliments slip.

It was a bit of a gulp signing the cheque but nothing ventured. . . . . . .

The nice people at Country Living are going to try and get some into the compimentary bags at the show for me - I missed the deadline for them being part of the London based packing (what a job!) but they can go at the front desk and be put in ad hoc.

I would stick them to my fridge. Graphic design as always by the talented Kate Watt.

Country Living news . . .

It is all confirmed now so I can go into details!

I actually feel a bit mean being excited as there is presumably some really sad reason for our good fortune. The people who were going to do the garden feature at the Country Living Scottish Fair have had to pull out and it has been offered to us.

We are going to move our stall from one of the aisles to a much larger area right in front of the main doors. There is room to take the van and also to put on a bit more of a show. It won't be a proper garden feature - you can't do a proper garden feature in 4 weeks and get everything else together for a stall as well, but I hope that it will look great and be a fitting entrance feature for the show.

I am really chuffed as it will allow us to show all the different sides of the business - I was worried that we would appear to be a business that sells just crafts when I feel that that is a small part of the whole. We were working on a large pinboard to show all the other sides of what we do - now we will be able to do it on a grander scale (Though as I like the pinboard idea we may do that as well)

I'm in a Country Living Kind of Mood (Board)

Well it is another boring CL post! I find it rather tragic that a 4 day show in March is taking up so much of my mind.

Last year - our first year exhibiting - we took the H-van with us and the idea was that the stall would look a bit like a Provencal market. There were pots of spring bulbs, dahlia tubers wrapped in tissue and all sorts of things made up in all types of materials. Everything was jumbled together in baskets and in the context it worked very well. (we won best stand & get to go back this year for free)

This time we are not taking the van (been there, done that) and the stand is smaller. The complete mix and match is not going to work. I love pattern, I love flowers, I love colour, I love patchwork. How do I resolve the need for some kind of order and theme on a small stall with my love of excess.

So I decided to cut wee bits of the materials I am using and stick them to a bit of card to check that they vaguely go together. And I think they do - obviously you wouldn't normally put them all in the same room but there is nothing screaming "get me out of here" either. You might put them all together in a patchwork (if they weren't all different weights).

I am now wafting around the house "moodboard" in hand choosing a colour for the paintwork - sugar bag light or cooking apple green ?

I also got around to loading up photos for the CL public relations people to another blog www.snapdragonphotos.blogspot.com

Why I am not a magazine stylist . . .

The Dumpling Times - local newspaper of Gartocharn Village - has offered to put in a bit about my Christmas opening hours if I can supply a festive photo.

This is a very kind offer and of course I am very pleased to take it up.

It is always on occasions like this that it becomes very very obvious that I am not a natural stylist or photographer. Photos like these, that are perfectly good enough for the blog, become suddenly very flawed when I think about newsprint. It suddenly becomes obvious that the van is squint and that 3 seedtrays would be better than 2, and that you can see the pylons in the background . . .

When we had the photographer here from Country Living Magazine he was very good at all those sort of things (which is partly why the photos in the finished article don't really look like here at all) - knowing how to position a chair at a table so that it looks like a chair in a photo, framing things so that the weeds and electricity lines don't intrude, and getting me to stand twisted so that I look slimmer in the finished magazine. It did however take 2 days and a lot of swearing to get the photographs.

It has now started to rain, I am not going back outside to get straight photographs so I shall have to hope that either photoshop has a straightening button or that the good people of Gartocharn are slightly off centre.