As you may or may not know, my wife does this Q & A article for the Landsculpter. The Landsculpter is the trade publication (magazine) published by the Michigan Green Industry Asscociation (MGIA). I look forward to reading her article each month, well at least the beginning part, I kind of fade when she starts talking about plants.

As the guy who usually answers the phone around here, I get asked a lot of questions too. I thought it'd be fun to do my own little Q & A but the Landsculpter wants nothing to do with me...... Good thing I've got this blog.

These are actual questions that I've recently received;

Q: "What size globes do you guys got ?"

Now I've been doing this plant buying and selling thing for a long time so I was pretty sure he was either referring to yews or arborvitae. Thanks to my years of experience and knack for dipolmacy, I was actually able to answer his question after asking a couple of questions myself. Do ya think this same person would call the hardware store and ask, "What size pipes you guys got?"

A: 24" (he was looking for Woodward globe arborvitae)

Q: "Where is the nearest laundry mat?"

You may be wondering, what does this have to do with the nursery/landscape business? My answer to that would be a lot actually. This customer obviously feels comfortable enough to call us for this information (I'm flattered). Think about it, this question is akin to calling your favorite Chinese restaurant to ask them where the nearest bowling alley is. I like to think we maintain a good relationship with our customers, this question confirms it.

A: Pontiac trail and Reynolds Sweet, right next to Hungry Howie's

Q: "Do you have the same Japanese maples as Christensen's?"

Where this question seams simple and benign, it actually is a bit complex and has more layers then a giant vidalia onion.
First off, this is Christensen's, Christensen's inc. is the legal name of Rushton Farms, Rushton Farms is our DBA (doing business as). That's why, here at the farm, we refer to "Christensen's" as "the Plant Center" and at the Plant Center, they refer to Rushton Farms as "the farm".       I told ya          I don't even want to go into the differences in Japanese maple varieties, different sizes, and vendors. Like I said at the beginning of this post, I kind of fade when the talk turns to plants. So I answerd thusly....

A: No

Well, that was kind of fun, and, I don't mind saying so myself, I think I did a pretty good job. (Look out Kim)