As a green industry professional, your clients look to you for the best advice, whether creating an outdoor living room or installing seasonal containers. And, when you're well-versed on the latest horticultural trends, it's easy to leverage your expertise to increase sales and expand your customer base. After all, understanding trends help you select plants, products, or services your customers desire—whether they realize it yet or not! Even focusing on a few specific trends helps show your clients that you're knowledgeable and prepared to keep their landscapes and installations fresh and trend-setting. And, if you're a supplier, understanding the latest trends ensures that you'll stock the "it" plants and products to meet your customers' demands.

But where do you begin? How do you know which trends have legs—and which become the "pet rock" of 2020? We have a couple of ideas to get you started...

Trend: Urban Greening

More than half of the world's population lives in cities—and by 2050, that number is expected to climb to 70 percent. But city-dwellers long for nature: tranquil, plant-filled spaces to relax, meet friends, entertain the kids, and post to Instagram. "Green Recreational Districts" and green infrastructure continues to grow as a priority. In fact, America in Bloom launched "Growing Vibrant Communities"—a program that measures a community's commitment and progress toward creating green, environmentally friendly spaces filled with flowers, urban trees, and vibrant landscapes. That's where you come in.

By understanding the rise in urban greening, you can focus proposals on urban-specific designs, city-appropriate plants, and green space hardscape elements to wow your prospective clients. As a supplier, you'll know to boost your inventory of plants appropriate for cityscapes. Trees under 30-feet tall, such as Acer campestre (Hedge Maple), Cercis canadensis (Eastern Redbud), and Amelanchier spp. (Serviceberry) work beautifully in urban environments under low utility lines or restricted spaces, for instance. Well-placed and well-managed urban-appropriate trees control stormwater runoff, sequester carbon, and reduce energy consumption—shading buildings during hot summers and reducing cold winds in winter. But trees aren't the only green needs. Gorgeous grasses, pretty perennials, and low-maintenance shrubs—choosing the best varieties for an urban setting gives you an advantage over the competition when you can sell the benefits of this trend to your clients. When a city issues an RFP for greenscape designs, you'll be ready, because you understand the needs for urban greening.

Or perhaps creating green roofscapes is your forte. Use the trend of urban greening to encourage your commercial clients to develop green escapes—above the city. By sharing your knowledge with developers and showing how green roofs will attract buyers or renters, your clients will look to you as a knowledgeable green partner. And, if you're a supplier, you can be ready for an increased demand for plant material that withstands elevated temperatures, wind exposure, and intense sunlight.

Trend: Plant Parenting

As you create proposals for urban greening, don't forget another trend: plant parenting. You've most likely seen the slew of books and social media accounts geared toward plant parents—millennials who pay top dollar for unique houseplants. However, why not extend the houseplant-love trend by marketing a growing "family" of plants—a green balcony oasis for houseplant parents! Creating small-space designs that utilize containers on an apartment or condo balcony gives an urban dweller a private green escape. Small-statured evergreens that provide continuous, year-round color married with seasonal tropical plants, annuals, and perennials look cohesive and refreshing when designed and installed by you. Consider suggesting a subscription service for ongoing maintenance, allowing your green balcony clients to enjoy the space without the stress.

By encouraging millennials' love of houseplants and showing urban dwellers how to extend plant parenting to balcony gardening, you've created new gardening customers. (The industry thanks you!)

Trend: Small-Space Edibles

There's nothing as delicious as a homegrown tomato—and growing food continues to surge in popularity. In the past, urban gardeners and apartment dwellers lamented their lack of space to grow tomatoes, melons, berries, and squash—all well-known space hogs. However, plant breeders listened—and new, compact fruit and vegetable varieties give small-space gardeners the perfect garden-to-table solution!

Introduce your clients to small-space edibles. Dwarf plants like Jelly Bean® Blueberry, Raspberry Shortcake®, or Baby Cakes™ Blackberry grow beautifully in containers on a porch or balcony. For a client with a small space garden, select a dwarf apple tree appropriate for the zone and espalier it along a wall.

Help your customers create a veggie container garden with new varieties appropriate for small spaces. Tomato varieties like 'Little Napoli' Compact Roma tomato, which grows just 2-3 feet tall, or Red Robin Cherry, which grows only 8-12 inches high, are perfect solutions for limited space. Likewise, 'Astia' French bush zucchini, bred for small space and container gardens, looks gorgeous on a balcony. And, if your client craves the sweet taste of watermelon but thinks growing it in a small space is impossible, introduce them to Sugar Pot—a watermelon that produces 8-10 pound fruit on vines only 18-20 inches long.

Whether you're a garden coach, designer, or installer, your knowledge of small space edibles will wow your clients, convincing them that yes—they can enjoy a "mini-farm" on the balcony, patio, or small backyard!

Trend: Wildlife Sensitive Environments

The reports of climate change—from the steep decline of North American birds in the past 50 years to wildfires, flooding, and melting Arctic ice—makes ecological, kinder, more "gentle" gardening top the trends list.

It's a good trend for the green industry to promote and practice.

Wildlife sensitive environments use fewer chemicals, focus on soil health, and include tough plants that are naturally pest and disease resistant. Savvy home gardeners and environmentally responsible companies embrace the trend, planting for pollinators and avoiding high maintenance shrubs, trees, and flowers that require chemicals for best performance.

Part of creating a wildlife sensitive environment includes incorporating plants your clients love—but selecting the most environmentally friendly, low maintenance cultivars. For instance, if your client adores roses, consider incorporating Earth-Kind roses or other cultivars with high pest- and disease-resistance to avoid chemical use. If your client requests a backyard wildlife habitat installation, include natives, like American beech, flowering dogwood, trumpet honeysuckle, goldenrod, viburnum, and spicebush in your designs. By giving your client a gorgeous design based on sound environmental practices, it's a win-win: you've created a happy client and protected the environment.

Trend: Water-wise Gardening

Along with the move towards environmental sustainability, water-wise plants and landscapes increase in popularity each year. Sales of succulents continue to grow, representing the most significant proportion of houseplants sold—and the trend expands into landscapes. With the increased awareness of climate change, xeric designs, and water-saving plants, top trends lists—and it's not going away.

Why should it? With so many stunning drought-tolerant, water-wise plants, your imagination can run wild, creating fabulous installations for clients. Plus, your clients will adore you for creating low-maintenance, lovely landscapes that will look great for years—while helping them feel good about their low environmental impact.

As a supplier, make sure to keep water-wise plants well stocked. This trend will continue to grow.

Trend: Pantone Color of the Year

Do you know that 2020 is the year of "Classic Blue"? For the past two decades, global color guru Pantone® proclaimed a "Color of the Year"—and trend followers everywhere quickly updated their wardrobes and interior décor with splashes of the anointed "it" color. By leveraging the Classic Blue trend, you can help your clients refresh their gardens with a bright burst of on-trend color with "Classic Blue" blooms!

Give your container subscription clients a stylish refresh with fabulous flowers like Geranium Rozanne. Add Eryngium' Big Blue' into your design plans, both for its on-trend color appeal as well as its multi-season interest. Source Classic Blue containers and cushions for outdoor living spaces. And brighten shady beds with the perfect blue flowers and variegated foliage of Polemonium Brise d'Anjou. Using "Classic Blue" to update beds, borders, and containers give your clients a fun, trendy refresh—and increased business for you!

Knowing the Color of the Year also benefits you as a supplier. Make sure to keep Classic Blue plants in inventory.

Whether you embrace one or all of the latest gardening trends, it's always fun to be on top of trends—especially when they can benefit both your business—and your clients!

When preparing estimates for clients, you want the most accurate, up-to-date costs for materials, whether you’re sourcing plants or purchasing pavers, and you want them fast. The first proposal in a client’s hand shows responsiveness and resourcefulness—attributes that define your company, but you don’t want to sacrifice profitability for speed. That’s why LandscapeHub integrated with DynaSCAPE, to make estimating easier.

What Are the Benefits of the DynaSCAPE Integration?

As the online marketplace for the landscape industry, LandscapeHub offers real-time costs for whatever your job requires. From conifers, perennials, and fruit trees to mulch, edging, and stone, you’ll find suppliers offering all the elements you need—in one place— to create a profitable landscape job. You may already use DynaSCAPE to manage your green business. (If not, take a look, because it’s a fantastic, comprehensive management program that supports you with budgeting, task management, billing, customer management, crew oversight, and even efficient routing for servicing clients.) As you build estimates in DynaSCAPE, you want the most accurate pricing available for your materials, whether they are plants or hardscape materials. The integration between our companies allows you to send job and estimate details directly from DynaSCAPE Manage360 to LandscapeHub. You list the items needed for your job, and we fill in the costs. We generate a quote for the materials, saving you time and ensuring accuracy when estimating, streamlining the product procurement process.

Why We Chose to Integrate

Both LandscapeHub and DynaSCAPE exist to make your job as a landscape professional easier. By creating an integration between our platforms, we give you higher accuracy when creating proposals and save you time when ordering, letting you focus on managing your business and creating landscapes for your clients—and a profitable return for you. Our goal is to help landscape buyers use technology to reduce the amount of time they spend building estimates and managing jobs. While often green professionals bemoan complicated technology, well-executed programs make a positive impact on landscape, hardscape, nursery, and green businesses, making procurement and management more efficient. We’re confident the partnership between LandscapeHub and DynaSCAPE will make your estimates and procurement much easier.

How Does It Work?

As a DynaSCAPE customer, you can enable access to LandscapeHub through your configuration settings in DynaSCAPE Manage360. (You’ll see the option under “My Company Settings”.)

We’ve discussed the advantages of aggregating shipping through LandscapeHub. But, you might be wondering how does freight with LandscapeHub, overall, work? How does LandscapeHub actually produce those advantages that come from aggregating shipping? Or those advantages that come from using LandscapeHub to handle shipping, period?  

Glad you asked! (Or wondered.)

We have an entire department that handles shipping and helps you get the best price, the best carrier, and the best turnaround possible. Here’s how it works.

Using trustworthy carriers

Our Logistics Manager, Rahan Omar says, “Handling nursery stock is not everyone’s cup of tea. When you call drivers and say ‘I have a load of trees that’s floor loaded,’ some drivers aren’t into it. But that’s why we have Rahan, because he is into it and keeps calling and working his (virtual) rolodex until he finds a carrier that works. “I’ve handled shipping for everything and nursery is a completely different ballgame.”

He has brought his experience to LandscapeHub and put it to work, transitioning LandscapeHub’s shipping operation from a mostly brokered situation to a direct carrier operation much of the time. By focusing on freight full time, Rahan can vet carriers and develop relationships with drivers who are not only knowledgeable, but happy to carefully deliver nursery stock on time and in great shape. “Going direct also allows us to pass cost savings along to customers,” he says. “And, when there is a delay or issue, there are many fewer phone calls to make to quickly get accurate information for the customer.”

Knowing when to call a broker (and which broker to call)

Rahan still uses brokers for LandscapeHub orders on occasion for complicated loads. This allows LandscapeHub to continue offering flexibility in freight that would eat up a lot of time (or even be impossible) for individual buyers. For example, if the LandscapeHub Market Managers and Logistics are trying to build a load that involves pickups in Dayton, Cincinnati, and Columbus, Ohio and dropoffs in Indianapolis, Carmel, and Westfield, Indiana, a well-connected specialty broker is much better positioned to efficiently handle the project and ensure on time delivery at a great price.

That ability and flexibility of LandscapeHub to build multi pickup and multi dropoff loads allows buyers to place much smaller orders without incurring high freight costs, especially if they are operating within a broad timeframe.

Coordinating pickup and delivery capabilities

It’s not enough to just find a truck to carry product. The LandscapeHub Logistics Department also coordinates with Market Managers, suppliers, and buyers to ensure which types of trucks suppliers can accept pickups from and that buyers can accept deliveries from. “Some people only want flatbeds, but there are fewer flatbed drivers with their own quality nursery tarps than there are dry vans (enclosed trucks) or reefers (refrigerated enclosed trucks),” says Rahan. It’s the responsibility of the LandscapeHub team to come up with a solution that works for everyone to get the products from point A to point B in good shape.

Getting the best price, regardless of load size

It’s much easier to coordinate orders that fill an entire truck from one supplier. Those are called “one pick” orders. In that case, Rahan sees an order come in and starts getting rates and seeing what equipment is available for shipping. Then he works with the Market Manager to clear the plan with the supplier and the buyer. “I might say, ‘I have a pickup with a flatbed Tuesday for delivery to the customer Wednesday. Can you accept this equipment for pickup and have the product ready by  8 am?’” He stresses, “There’s no delivery without successful pickup,” including the timing and the truck type. He’s careful never to send a truck that the supplier can’t accommodate.

In the case of a multi-stop pickup and dropoff or a smaller order, he will work to combine orders into one truck so that buyers can split the costs. “We just find out what their timeline is,” he says. “Sometimes, if a buyer needs product from a specific supplier on a short time frame, they’re willing to pay higher freight to get it when and where they need it. Other times, they’ll let us know they can wait and see what other orders come in.”

The same thing happens when there’s a weather delay. “If it’s raining and one supplier can’t dig trees on the customer’s timeline, the Market Manager might try to source from another supplier. It’s then my job to see how the freight compares and if it is worth trying to switch. Again, sometimes we’ll switch suppliers and sometimes we won’t.” Market Managers work closely with LandscapeHub customers to ensure the smoothest delivery possible for both buyers and suppliers.

An extensive network allows for flexible freight options

The short answer to how freight works with LandscapeHub is truly, “Our team takes care of it so you don’t have to.” We have the personnel and network to offer flexible freight options for orders large and small, over distances long and short, without stressing the resources of buyers searching for high quality material.

And that, well, that takes a load off of everyone.

There are entire books about how to create a business plan.

Let’s face it, though — do any of us really have time to read them? Nope. Especially not when we’re getting ready for winter trade shows and the spring rush.

Here’s the good news: you don’t have to read a business plan book or spend 20 hours writing out a plan in order to enjoy real growth in the direction you want to grow in 2020. All you need to do is spend some time evaluating three areas of your business and jotting notes for your 2020 plan of attack.

We call this the two-page business plan, and, if you actually do it and then stick to it, you’ll see real progress — more progress than if you get stuck trying to create a 20 page plan that you won’t actually use.

You’ll review your:

• Pricing structure
• Portfolio
• Growth goals

Ready? Let’s go.

Pricing Structure Review

LandscapeHub buyers AND suppliers can both benefit from a review of pricing structures. Whether you’re selling services, plants, or hardscape materials, it’s worth spending some time to ensure you’re charging what you need and what the market will bear. It’s possible the answer is “yes, our prices are fine,” but you won’t know unless you ask these questions:

What’s my pricing model? Is it cost plus or value based? Cost plus works the best with large volume but you can leave money on the table with this structure if the market will bear a higher price. (When listing your materials on LandscapeHub, take care not to compete solely on price, and take into consider the different markets where plants are listed.)

Value based pricing is an excellent structure for service business, but you still need to ensure that you’re covering costs and have built in a percentage for profit.

When did I last raise prices and how did I do it? One way to raise prices is to introduce new items or services with a higher price point that render older items and services obsolete.

How has my business changed? Maybe you hired more staff, expanded your market, cut delivery time, changed the types of clients you work for, or improved your offerings, all of which could factor into price changes.

How do I feel when I’m doing certain types of work? This is a more touchy-feely question, and possibly more related to buyers than suppliers, but it’s worth asking. If you notice you’re doing work that you once loved, but is now irritating you, maybe it’s because you need to charge more for the service. For example, if you’re creating landscape designs at $1,500 each, and you find yourself overwhelmed and annoyed, that could be a sign that what you’re producing is worth more in the context of your business and your life, and you need to increase prices.

How’s your workload? Are you overwhelmed? If demand is greater than your supply (of time or product), time to institute an increase!

The end of the year is a natural time to send a new rate card or price increase. It’s also a great time to sell work in advance, giving people a chance to “lock in” 2019 prices if they book and pay part or all of the fee in advance.

Portfolio Review

If you’re a buyer on LandscapeHub, chances are that your portfolio showcases your designs. If you’re a supplier, you still have a portfolio: it’s just more of a catalog or pictures of the plants you sell.

Buyers, ask yourselves: Does my portfolio showcase the services I want to sell? For example, if you’ve pivoted toward container subscriptions but all of your photos are of large landscapes (or vice versa) it’s time for an overhaul. Does my portfolio have current pictures?  Are they colorful, high resolution, bright, inviting? Or are they obviously scans of old printed photos?

Suppliers, ask yourselves: Do your catalog or availability pictures showcase the sizes of plants you want to sell or are there images of sizes you no longer carry?Are the pictures in focus, brightly colored, and crisp? Do you have pictures taken at your location or are they obviously from a different source? (Showing some of your location helps build trust that what you’re selling actually comes from you.)If you only showcase some of the items you sell due to space constraints or costs, are you showcasing your high-value, or high-volume items?

In our industry, pictures do the talking far more than words, so make sure your pictures are working for you. If they’re not, update them.

Review of Growth Goals

Do you ever look around, think about your work, and say to yourself, “How did I get here?” You could be completely happy with the way your business has grown. Or, maybe, you feel like you want to be doing something else.

Whether you’re happy with how your business has evolved or you want to grow in a new direction, taking time to thoughtfully evaluate where you are, how you got there, and where you want to be next year or in five years will let you continue to stay on a personally and financially fulfilling path.

Ask yourself these questions:

For which products and services do I receive the most referrals?

Which products and services that I offer lead to the most repeat business?

Of the first two, which products and services do I most enjoy producing? Which products and services that I enjoy producing have the highest ROI? (You’ll want to shift your sales focus to those — the ones you enjoy that actually make you money.)

Which products and services do I need to stop offering or producing?

Which ones are high input and low reward?

Which ones irritate you (and upping the price won’t help)?

Which ones could be better offered by other providers?

Asking these questions will help you narrow your focus and deliver superior products and services. By focusing, you’ll become the “go to” provider for products and services that make you money and make you happy. Rather than letting your business blow wherever the wind takes you, spend a few minutes charting your course for the year ahead. Then, in 2020, make sure your hand is on the wheel, guiding the ship on your intended path.