Green Plumb’s Value Proposition – dogged commitment to quality.
I’ve been thinking about GPGD’s value proposition lately, based on an interaction with a client, and I realized that I often assume a potential client knows, more or less, what sets me apart from other garden-related businesses, when – in fact – many do not. I’ll be working to stress that value proposition throughout all that we do, but let me highlight one particular attribute that sets us apart.
For many years, our company has planted hundreds of native gardens because we are drawn to their beauty and the power of their biological benefits. Not only can they support food and habitat for wildlife, but these plantings have healthy root structures which adds important biology into the soil. These roots are far deeper and denser than non-natives, allowing for greater carbon storage, underground; deeply-rooted native plants also absorb and help mitigate storm water runoff, a huge bonus given increases in unstable weather patterns.
Native plantings are a bit miraculous, and we’ve been hooked by their power for several decades, when we first started working on ecological restoration projects in the Chicago Wilderness area, years ago.
A recent client I had the honor to help, was only vaguely aware of this work history of ours, and before meeting with us, called up some local nurseries to help design and install a bird-friendly native garden; his request to them fell flat, which is how he ended up working with GPGD.
What that client did not know, was our value proposition of client-specific and site-specific doggedness and high-quality, native-plant outcomes. I reflected on this because he noted that he had no idea who to call, and local nurseries made sense. He soon found out what I know to be true – that large nurseries will design, sell, and install what they have in stock, easily subbing out a high-value native plant for a well-branded, run-of-the-mill and more commonly-seen horticulture variety.
In our work with this client, we rounded up a plant palette sourced from 5 different nurseries, taking a few weeks to corral sources and inventories, rather than 1 conveniently-located nursery in town. My partner and I drove five-to-six hours, combined, to find all of the plants designed on this client’s plan and install order, including that *one* order of Spicebush shrub that no one, nearby, seemed to have in stock.
Green Plumb Garden Design’s value proposition is not only our experience and knowledge of native and hardy, top-performing garden plants, but in our commitment to search for the best plant sources, no shortcuts or substitutions allowed.
The results of this doggedness are revealed – I hope – throughout our work and this website, but also in before and after images/ video of a rain garden, developed from seed, in Chicago’s south suburbs. The image below is our ‘BEFORE’ shot – while perennials are still dormant; the link – below this image – takes you to a 20-second video of those seeded perennials in all their July summer glory.
