1/29/2016
Shipping* Containers
Amanda Thomsen
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away …
I was a professional custom container creator for a garden center in Chicago. I made containers for eight to 11 hours a day, for five to seven days a week, six months a year, for a few years. So I have few opinions about containers, the people who make them and the people who buy them:
• One day my boss came to work with an angelic smile and the hint of a halo above her head and said, a celestial choir singing behind her, “Screw alphabetizing and organizing these annuals every day. Let’s arrange them by color. That’s how people buy them, anyways!” And this was the best day of my life. I still think of it that way, even though it was 13 years ago and I’ve since gotten married and had a baby. IT. WAS. THE. BEST. DAY. EVER.
• With the yard arranged this way, customers could choose-a-palooza without almost any brain activity on their part or mine. “Hi! Welcome. The shade plants are over there, sun plants are over here. All the plants pretty much all act the same… just don’t choose Gerber daisies and you’ll be okay!”
• Then after shopping for 90 minutes, they come up to the register with a tray of Gerber daisies ... and one spike.
• If customers were filling a smaller circumference container, I’d draw the appropriate sized circle on the bottom of a cardboard tray and ask them to imagine that as the pot. It usually gives them a better visual and then they can help themselves with less drama. If the pot was very large, I had sidewalk chalk in my pocket and I’d draw the circumference on the ground and let them play “dressing room” right there.
• I think the time of the “thriller, spiller, filler” is OVER. I guess some people enjoy the guidelines, but many just thought of it as a rule they couldn’t remember or stick with. I go with “KILLER! KILLER! KILLER!” i.e. just pick some KILLER plants and jam them in a pot together. That’s killer. No rules. All the rhymes, but easier to remember.
• People buy ready-made pots for lots of reasons, like seeing a work of wonder and needing to have it, or recognizing something is adequate for their needs and they’re low on time. My favorite kind to make was the really over-wrought, super faux artsy pots to see if anyone would buy them. The best one I ever made was a vintage Travertine marble sink as the planter, then I put maybe three tiny mosses in it, lots of pea gravel, a blue plastic Buddha and a row of Lucky Bamboo as a backdrop. It was so terrible that it was wonderful. I was the John Waters of Chicago containers. I put a price tag of $600 on it and it lasted a few hours. I still remember the guy that bought it. He had massive biceps.
• Please use shrubs and trees in mixed pots. It’s so lovely and underused. Always go with underused.
• Think outside the garden center. Sometimes you need to shake it up with unconventional pots (measuring cups, cookie jars and waste paper baskets) bought at the thrift store and reused materials. (Yes, I have 3-ft. long florescent light bulbs in my pots right now. They look AWESOME). Use appropriate-sized stumps in your pots as a tiny stage for a funky tableau, use fairy lights, hula hoops, fishing line, old shoes, ceramic cats, troll dolls and pool cues. You’re thinking you don’t have time for that; I’m telling you you do. Because you know who REALLY doesn’t have time for that? Home Depot and Walmart. Make stuff that’s one-of-a-kind.
Because you can.
GP
*“Shipping” is current slang for “romantic relationship,” at least it was at the time of my writing this.
Amanda Thomsen is now a regular columnist in Green Profit magazine. You can find her funky, punky blog planted at KissMyAster.co and you can follow her on Facebook and Twitter @KissMyAster.