“Elevate, Arrange, Inspire" - Visual Merchandising for Garden Retail
- Souny Kennedy
- Sep 1
- 2 min read
If you think you’ve got the eye for assembling attractive displays, endcaps and arrangements in your garden center or nursery, you might find that trying your hand at it repeatedly can help to align you and your store’s unique vision.
Visual merchandising, which is the art and science of designing and arranging retail spaces to maximize customer attention and encourage sales, can be a creative outlet for nursery workers.
It’s the chance to flex your problem-solving skills, let your creative talents shine, and will no doubt boost your confidence once you watch your display sell down or in some cases- get torn apart. To get started, particularly if you’ve never created a display before, is to pick 2-3 elements from different departments that someone could use together. For example: a tropical plant, a small indoor pot, and a houseplant fertilizer.
If you want to start with a theme, that helps too. What about pet safe plants? Create an arrangement of pet friendly tropical plants: palms, calatheas, peperomia, bromeliads. Or, cacti and succulent: try a selection of different arid plants and display them with the coordinating soil and fertilizer. To add even more value to the display, what about a printed handout with a list of all the pet friendly plants your store carries?
Then, arrange the items at different heights, using wooden boxes or anything you can find to create elevation. If you don’t have those items lying around the nursery, walk a few laps around the store. There’s always something hiding in a storage container or office that could be utilized in a display!
Creating displays and visual merchandising is all about seeing what other people can’t and acting upon it. Connecting the dots between different items and how they can be used together is part of the magic. You get to tell the story! It could be rooted in personal love for the items in the display or simply the one you’re creating in your head to sell these items. Then, once it sells down you can either fluff and refill the display or create something entirely new.
Birds Eye Tip: Watch customers interact with your display. How long do they stand and look at it? Do they say anything? Don’t be afraid to observe and casually eavesdrop- and use what you’ve learned to inspire your next display.
Rachel Reynolds is an experienced visual merchandiser who took her years of hands-on experience at one of Houston’s premier nurseries and created Birds Eye Visual Merchandising, a brand dedicated to expanding the conversation about creative merchandising in the green industry.
She currently offers team trainings, merchandising audits and helps garden centers and their passionate employees showcase their unique store vision.
Bird’s Eye Visual Merchandising