Falk’s Education: The Heart Behind it
Something you may have picked up on by now either through reading these blogs or from shopping with us for any extended period of time is that we are very big on education. When you first came by and shopped you may have been surprised when we’ve talked you out of buying something. This is not typical behaviour when it comes to the sales industry. The sales industry says sell as much as you can no matter what, and that the customer is always right. Though we certainly want to help you as much as we possibly can and want you to leave happy there is something else that is extremely important to us. More important than both previous statements.
Education!
Something many people may not know is that Sheldon’s greatest passion in the industry is for people to understand their plants, to understand what it actually takes to have a beautiful yard. To get this across, we do things differently than most retail businesses. One of the first things is the mindset when shopping for plants. When it comes to cosmetic appearances there is a big difference between shopping for plants and shopping for clothes. If a shirt has a hole in it or lose strings this is a sign of poor craftsmanship or just a malfunction. Often stores will replace these items or discount them depending on what the damage is. At greenhouses, cosmetic damages are handled a little differently. Since plants are living creatures, they will show signs of stress fairly obviously. The most common is fungal leaf spot. Sounds terrible right? But it is simply a cosmetic issue from a humid and hot summer. This will not harm the plant and when winter rolls around it will drop all its leaves and grow fresh new ones. This can be hard to wrap our heads around sometimes, and if you shop like you shop for clothes it will be even harder. We often say plants are closer to animals than furniture. Because they are living things that need care just like a pet. If you don’t feed your tree (watering and fertilizer) its going to die. And this is where education is a big thing. We want people to feel capable and well prepared for the plants they buy. Some of you may have experienced the shock of us handing you our rather long care sheet when you’ve purchased some of our plants. This is part of our education program: don’t throw out the paper just because you read a wiki page on planting. The internet has lots of info, but a lot of it, especially with plant care, is not accurate.