October: the perfect time to think spring
It’s that difficult time of the year when we are all trying to plan for spring while still remaining focused on what’s left of the current season. It’s also time for us to begin the process of spring pre-books. Pre-booking plant material for spring has become a major tool for us and our customers when it comes to planning for spring and managing our inventory. It allows customers to secure spring inventory, and it helps us to take some of the speculation out of spring sales.
Although the inventory we have available for pre-booking varies somewhat from year to year, we try to have key varieties in stock for spring sales every season. The quantities and varieties of what we have available from one spring to the next depend on a few factors. One major factor that we need to consider every year is that the inventory we have going into winter is the inventory we will have available for spring, and there are limits to when we can stop planting for the season. This means that we need to try to anticipate what the demand will be for each variety for the current season and plan accordingly, so that we have enough inventory to satisfy this year’s demands, but also have enough of our staple varieties to overwinter for next spring. One of our biggest weaknesses throughout the years has been falling short when it comes to spring inventory, and this is something that we are striving to improve. We are working on plans to significantly increase our production of all line items to ensure that we have inventory to meet the needs of our customers throughout the season, and especially in the spring months when we have typically fallen short.
Another major factor that affects spring inventory, and something we take into account when deciding which varieties to make available for pre-booking, is the success we have had overwintering varieties in the past. The general rule of thumb is that plants lose two zones of hardiness in the pot. We take many measures to ensure the greatest overwintering success, but there are always a few sensitive or marginal varieties that are not reliable when it comes to surviving winter in the pot. We have had variable success with Hakonechloa, Pennisetum, and Anemones, so we typically don’t allow these varieties to be pre-booked for spring. There are also some varieties that take a long time to emerge from dormancy or fill out in the spring. For example, Itea, Clethra, Weigela, and Hydrangea quercifolia, in addition to warm season grasses like Panicum and Miscanthus, often take so long to fill out on top that we feel it is best to exclude them from spring pre-book orders. Ultimately, when we create our inventory pre-book lists, we only include the items that we are most confident in being able to provide for spring sales.
When it comes to shipping out pre-booked material, communication between our sales and inventory staff couldn’t be more critical, and spring is also a time when accuracy of our inventory comments is especially important. Generally speaking, any plant that is rooted and saleable going into winter will remain in inventory with a ready date of NOW through winter and into spring. This means that plants that have died back for the winter are available, but may not have any growth on top. We remove the comments as things begin to die back in the fall, and then indicate the status of their growth in the spring with “Signs of Life” and “Leafing Out” comments. Our customers have many different needs and expectations when it comes to the level of top-growth of plant material in spring, and those expectations change with each week. While an emerging plant may be acceptable in March, by May, many customers expect full or nearly full plants. Expectations also vary widely by use; a well-rooted but emerging Hosta may be fine for some landscape installations, but unacceptable for garden center sales. Our objective is to ship out pre-booked plant material at the best time for each customer, so our inventory and sales staff need to communicate constantly about the status of each order.
We try to ship out pre-booked inventory by early June because plants do have a shelf-life. Our goal is to always send out our plant material at the time it looks best, and so it’s important to ship our overwintered inventory before it is past its prime. As we move into June, we start to transition into our spring-planted inventory, so any pre-booked material not taken by this time is usually reallocated to newer crops, if newer crops are available.
As we begin to wind down and prepare for the long winter ahead, I personally find a lot of satisfaction in thinking about and preparing for spring. It gives us a chance to think about opportunities and reflect on changes we can make to improve for the future. We are looking forward to working with you as you plan for your 2021 needs, and to working together to ensure that we all get off to a great start next spring.
