Garden Rant: So You Want to Be a Garden Designer--We Have a Winner!

Thanks for playing, everybody! From the responses to her guest rant, Love has chosen a winner.  Gentle Gardener, you're getting a free book.

via www.gardenrant.com

Wow! I won a book on GardenRant! A real, paper book that can be read in a bubble bath after gardening. From Love Albrecht Howard, author of So You Want to Be a Garden Designer from Timber Press....a sistah corporate marketing refugee...#in

Comments

[virginia rockwell]

Thanks, Love! Your book is fab. Having spent the afternoon doing the billing for April to clients, I appreciate your frank assessment of the working capital needed in this very season business, and other tips and treasures.

But especially I enjoyed the bits about client behaviour. We could continue to dish. Is there a Witness-to-client-pathological-behaviour Protection Program?!

I garden in Rhode Island in the summer so I hope we can get together sometime. I've salivated over Sylvan Nursery's list so perhaps we can do a field trip.

Perhaps to collaborate on a new topic: How to be a Great Client---and get MORE than you expected from your designer, contractor or other helpers.

Some clients have us jumping through hoops for them, sharing plants with them, wanting to do our best, with a smile on our faces. If there is a change in scheduling, we move their jobs forward. Others, not so much.

I learned alot about this in the advertising business. In the residential landscape design business there is much for clients to learn.

One of my first clients taught me the designer's prayer. Every night, when you go to sleep you must pray...

May the clients with money get good taste, and,
May the clients with good taste get money."

And to this we add: good green intentions (aka eco-consciousness).

[Love Albrecht Howard]

Gentle Gardener . . . Hello!

Tis I, Love Albrecht Howard. I hope you enjoy the book . . . I CERTAINLY enjoyed your posts in response to my guest blog entry. Thank you! Marketing backgrounds notwithstanding, I feel we are like-spirits, for sure. Even your tag line, "for a garden as pleasing to nature as it is to the eye" is exactly how I design and garden. I know you will particularly appreciate the chapter, 'The Green Industry: A Greener Shade of Green.'

I bid you wonderful gardens, fabulous gardening, and . . . lots of well-paying clients who appreciate you and your talents!

All the best,
Love