A passion for growing your own plants can often turn into a dream of selling plants and opening a plant business. You will need a licence to sell plants, and if you plan to sell plants online, you will also need to provide plant passports when dispatching orders. But what else do you need to know before you dive into selling plants?
What Is a Plant Nursery?
Plant nurseries are defined as “somewhere plants are propagated and grown to a desired size”. While not all plant nurseries are open to the public, some retail nurseries are run alongside garden centres and other gardening businesses. But a plant nursery business is just one version of a gardening or plant business, and plants are just the start! Here’s everything to consider if you want to start your own plant business.
Empower Your Customers
If you sell plants, you should also sell the tools and equipment needed to help plants thrive. Providing a full range of garden tools, plant care and brushware items will help transform your business into a one-stop shop for all things plants.
Remember to accommodate all size gardens, so as not to isolate potential customers. For example, when it comes to watering, you want to cater to small gardens with handheld watering cans but also carry a product range for customers with a large outdoor space by offering sprinklers too.
Similarly, you should carry a wide range of gardening tools. From saws and blades for heavy-duty landscaping jobs to hand trowels and forks for more lightweight garden tasks. This also demonstrates a willingness to cater to different budgets and a broad target audience.
Plant Care and Weed Control
As well as providing basic supplies, you should offer specialist products to help your customers’ plants thrive after purchase. Ensure you’re offering a wide range of plant feed to suit any garden needs, and give your customers guidance on how to use the products. Many plant nurseries have huge plant offerings but less space to stock a generous selection of gardening accessories, so having a broad range can give you the edge on any competing nursery business.
As well as plant feed, you should consider offering products like weedkiller and weed control fabrics to present solutions to common garden problems. This reassures customers they will be prepared for any potential stumbling blocks!
If your plant care business will be selling weed killers and insect deterrents, ensure that you and your staff are fully trained on the safe use and storage of pesticides. This is crucial knowledge you’ll need to pass on to your customers to keep them safe.
Provide Pest Control Solutions
Whether they’re new to growing plants or are long-term backyard growers, your customers will want to protect their plants from pests. Offer a diverse range of pest control products to protect your customers’ gardens, so they’re not deterred from pursuing their passion.
For the more eco-conscious customer, you can offer slug tape that only acts as a deterrent and does not harm wildlife. Similarly, citronella incense and candles will keep midges away without killing them.
When you start a plant business, it’s a good idea to keep your product offering broad, so pest control items needn’t be restricted to just the garden. Find deterrents for rodents, birds and bugs in our pest control range.
Don’t Forget the Indoor Plants
An indoor plant care business can be a great way to supplement your outdoor plants and gardening store. Not only are UK gardens getting smaller, but an average of one in eight households has no garden at all, so enthusiasm for indoor plants is ever growing. In 2018, the UK’s indoor house plant and flower market was worth £2.2 billion.
Ensure you’re not excluding potential customers by including indoor watering cans, houseplant feed and indoor sprayers. It’s easy to combine these items with other homeware and gifts to diversify your product offering even further.
Offer Plant Care Services
If you have a green thumb or know other plant lovers with an entrepreneurial spirit, there are lots of services you can run alongside your plant business. You may choose to offer free advice in-store or online.
You could facilitate workshops and training at your plant business, exploring different aspects of growing plants. For example, you could guide people on propagation, giving attendees a small cutting and the tools required to grow new plants. They could even bring in live plants for you to demonstrate how to take cuttings! There are so many options that can help diversify your income and offer real value to your customers.
There may be other local businesses that would be interested in running workshops from your space. Find ways to collaborate with them to offer a range of different services and set yourself apart from competitors.
Consider running live plant FAQs on your social media accounts, where customers can send photos of their plants and find out what’s wrong with them. Using your social media accounts in this way can be a great opportunity to upsell products that will solve your customers’ problems. E.g. if someone submits a photo of an outdoor plant suffering from yellowing leaves, you can diagnose the issue and recommend sequestered iron plant tonic to aid greening of the leaves. This not only provides an excellent aftercare service for your customers but can also gain new ones.
Make Your Business More than Just Selling Plants
While your existing customers will most likely be made up of people who love plants, there are other items you can offer that will be relevant, even to those without a green thumb!
All UK households have a wheelie bin or similar, so wheelie bin numbers are a convenient item you can offer in your till area at the point of sale. They take up very little storage space and are a perfect addition to plant and gardening items.
Connect With a Wholesale Business
Even if you grow plants yourself, you’ll need to source all your other supplies to provide a full plant care business. As a new and small business, it can be difficult knowing where to start, but building a relationship with a like-minded and reliable supplier will help your business run smoothly.
Make a list of exactly what products you’d like to provide, and visit any local plant nursery or garden centre businesses to get an idea of how you’d like your plant business to look. There may be items that aren’t available in other nurseries you’d like to offer, which could prove to be a massive opportunity.
For more information about how Chartrent can support you start a plant business, contact our friendly team today. Call 01603 426167 or email sales@chartrent.co.uk for more information.