The plant sale at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden this past weekend turned out really well! I have shopped this sale as a customer many times … this was my first experience there as a vendor. Having done the sale at Hartwood Days the weekend before, Steve and I were able to fine-tune what we needed to do and how we would do it for Ginter. This helped a LOT.
It looked for a while on Thursday like it wasn't going to happen.
I missed the first day of the sale … I was on Day 2 of a really nasty cold. I felt too bad to go out, and I had no business taking my germs on the road along with the roses. Steve (bless his heart) took the roses I pulled from inventory and he set up and manned the booth by himself. He decided that he could make it work, if I was available to answer questions over the phone. So, I sat on the couch, blew my nose a lot, watched TV, knitted, and answered about 30 phone calls from Steve. “Is this Rose Technical Support?”, he would ask.
Most of the questions were about the details or habits of specific varieties. Steve was able to answer almost all of the other questions by himself. He’s helped me in the garden enough, or watched me do it myself, to be able to advise customers on our routine of rose care … which is what many wanted to know. I cannot possibly thank him enough for doing this.
I was nearly 100% on Saturday, so we both went to do the second day. We loaded the truck with more roses, to replace the ones he’d sold the day before. There were more people shopping on Saturday than there were on Friday, and it was a good thing that both of us were working the booth. We were busy.
Our new rose tags with photos were great! They allowed people to browse the pots and see what each one would look like if it were blooming. I wish I’d thought of this before now. It would have made the first part of the season a whole lot easier.
(written by Hartwood Roses. Hartwood Roses blog)
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