Most of the plants in the plant centre were remarkably damp and happy, given how hot it was over the weekend, and my colleagues who were on duty must have worked extremely hard to keep them like that. It meant that the amount of watering we had to do this morning wasn't too bad at all, really nothing more than normal.
The phone rang, and it was one of our less favourite customers wanting to know whether we had a particular geranium in stock. Be in no doubt, if you shop at all regularly at any smallish retail outlet, the staff will have views on you, and whether you are a nice and sensible person they will go the extra mile for, or a right nuisance. I went to see what geraniums we had left, and discovered that we had four of that variety, priced at £6.50. The regular but unloved customer drawled that they were very expensive, and that while he had been going to come to us because we were closer, Beth Chatto had them for £4.65. He supposed I wouldn't like to match her on price? I said that no, I was familiar with Beth Chatto's plants, shopping there myself, and that her's were smaller. Why he expects to get a well-grown plant in a 2 litre pot for the same price as a smaller plant in a 1 litre pot beats me, other than that he is always a pain. Later on somebody else rang wanting to know whether we had a particular shrub. Unfortunately when I checked we hadn't, but he commented how soothing it was listening to my regular footsteps on the gravel as I looked for it. Now that's the sort of chat-up line that gets you exemplary service next time round.
The manager has finally achieved his will and is allowed to move the compost so that it is under the canopy at the front of the shop, instead of being piled outside at the back in the rain, getting soggy. It has taken a campaign by staff of at least a year (and more like two) to get the proprietors to agree to this. They are on holiday this week, grouse shooting in Scotland (well, they are going shooting at least once. I don't suppose they're doing it every day) and the manager thought he would strike while the iron was hot, before they could change their minds again.
One of the things cluttering up the space under the canopy was a large wooden stand holding imitation hay racks, hanging baskets and brackets. The hay racks are fairly hideous, and we must sell about two a year, making the stand a terribly inefficient use of the available retail space. The manager wanted to disassemble it, in order to reuse part of it somewhere else, and free up the canopy for the compost, and lamented that it was a pity the gardener was on holiday this week, since he is normally does that sort of job. I looked at the stand, and said that it didn't look too complicated to unscrew it, if only we could find a Phillips screwdriver. We couldn't, but the young gardener borrowed the gardener's one from their shed. You could tell that the thing had been put together using a power screwdriver, since the heads of some of the screws were buried, and others were done up so tightly they slightly depressed the surrounding wood, but I got them out eventually without stripping any of their heads. That would have been embarrassing, since my mechanical skills don't extend to drilling out broken screws. Once it finally came apart I found I'd removed more screws than I need have done, since until it was in pieces I didn't fully understand how it fitted together.
The manager allowed me to assemble the plants for tomorrow evening's talk through the day, which saves me a trip tomorrow. I asked him if the garden club lady was always difficult and he said yes, when he gives talks to their club she keeps ringing him with questions and fussing as well. I managed to cram two trolley loads of plants into the Skoda, and there were lots more showing colour I could have taken if there'd been room, so they should be satisfied. I included a couple of pots that looked like nothing at all, but which are going great guns in my garden, to illustrate the point that one of the difficulties of buying plants for a late summer show is that it can be difficult or impossible to persuade them to behave in containers the way they do growing in the open ground. And I took one nice looking purple leaved Cotinus, to use to remind them that one of the problems with late summer gardens is not that there is a shortage of flowers, but that so much of the surrounding foliage looks tatty. And I'm going to explain about the seasonal stocking habits of plant nurseries, which are at least in part driven by the seasonal buying patterns of customers, so there is a chicken and egg element. Really she should not have been quibbling about my fee, the amount of work that goes into these presentations.
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