Increase Your Profits

Increase your profits by suggesting plants to your clients that bring life to their landscape and deliver great looks and color with ease. Homeowners and businesses are looking for quality and value not only in installation and maintenance, but also with plants that perform well and improve their property value. Recommending the right plants for the right place that have been bred to perform in their climates and soil conditions is a good starting point. Bottom line: They want their property to show well without a lot of work.

Assessing the home's style and architectural features opens options for customers to discover new plants that will perform in their landscape and enhance its features.  For instance, Margie Grace, of Grace Designs, a member of APLD, who's both a professional landscape designer and landscape contractor, says customers are looking for simple and creative solutions and recommends plants that ''don't hug your house's foundations but enhance the lines with color, style and great attributes.'' She suggests customers might ''try crape myrtle to soften a corner or plant bougainvillea as a foundational plant for great color.'' One new option on the market is the Bambino Bougainvillea Series, which offers a variety of colors and various foliage patterns.

Clients want exciting cultivars that are great looking, eco-friendly and attract pollinators like butterflies and birds.

Savvy customers want plants that are attractive as hedges, borders and embankments and are heat tolerant and require less water. The new Buddleia hybrid Flutterby Series - a compact-growing series that features a dense growth habit and continuous showy blooms ranging from lavender, pink and white, throughout early summer until frost, in USDA Zones 5-10.

Landscape contractors should keep abreast with trade shows, publications, webinars, social media sites, and with growers who can provide information on the latest plant material and best production plants for the zone. Even if customers insist on plants they've seen in a magazine, the contractors' role as a team partner is to guide and educate on the best plants that fit the home or business' architectural style and perform well in the soil conditions and climate.