Department: Plant Centre
Buying & selling of plants
- First stage is to decide what they want. Malcolm Berry decides what plants to buy in for the plant centre.
- They put in 'reserves' (reservations) and anything else they buy in that is not/ doesn't have to be reserved is called 'free stock'.
- They use NAVISION - an EPOS system that connects to the till to manage & store buy and sell data. Can do EPOS survey requests.
- There are 40,000 'lines' (different cultivars) at Wisley, the plant centre sells 12,000 of these lines.
- Each RHS garden tries to choose plants unique/ local to site.
- Bedding growers only supply Wisley.
- They buy 90% of their stock from U.K nurseries - from bigger nurseries e.g. Hilliers, Farplants, Liss Forest, Lowaters to small ones. Lots of specialist growers. They have a local man (Peter Smith) who has a microprop lab & just grow Daphne for them. Alpines from D'Arcy & Everest in Cambridgeshire, a man who just grows a small amount of Rhodohypoxis for them in his own garden. Even a local orchid grower of Cymbidium.
- Only house plants no local grower (not a profitable), they buy these in from Holland. Other international suppliers: Miniet in France for 10L plants, Heine, Germany for Ilex crenata shaped balls. Buxus, bay trees also from Holland. Some of their nurseries buy from abroad.
- Their trees are FSC wood certified.
- They don't recommend the use of peat but don't enforce it as a rule.
- Don't have P & D quarantine.
- Nurseries recommend plants.
- People tend to buy by colour - Blue hydrangeas sell very well. Orange is a hard colour to sell, espec. house plants.
- Plants bought in flower earlier than in the garden - flowers sells.
- There are correlations between The Garden magazine, plant centre & garden, but they don't coordinate so well, garden mag works 4 months in advance. . Sometimes The Garden feature rare plants & plant centre don't sell/ can't get hold of. E.g. they had Daphne bholua 'Jacqueline Postill' on the front cover & they couldn't find any source of it. Mag & garden can be influential on what sells, but readers seem to sense the good/ interesting/ rare/ unusual plants.
- They take reservations for plants from customers e.g. Alstroemeria 'Indian Summer' & Toonensis flamingo
- Propagation in garden don't supply to Plant Centre - can't meet demand. But some nurseries are allowed to take cuttings of plants in garden.
- Trees at sold at approx 8ft because its what customer expects when buying 'a tree'.
- Bread 'n' butter plants - Salvia nemerosa 'Caradonna', Alchemilla mollis, Geranium 'Rozanne' (plant of the century).
- What sells - cottage garden plants, tall herbaceous plants (not a successful nursery doing this because of transport costs).
- Mark up cost of plants = x2.8 and x2.6 for bedding plants.