Today is the day that the retail shopping world goes cyber. Welcome to cyber Monday. Computers allow us to do any number of tasks but the task today is to make it easy to buy just the right gift. Cyber shopping allows you to buy anything from anywhere at any time all from the comfort of home while having morning coffee.
Cyber shopping has entered the world of horticulture. Any number of sites allow you to look at a catalog of plant pictures and choose small table plants or even large specimen floor plants. These are picked by somebody, put into a box and delivered right to your door.
While cyber shopping may be okay for many purchases, plants should not be one of them. The computer is taking away the experience of walking into a greenhouse to enjoy the sights and smells that are associated with living plants. It's a chance to get away from in front of that blue screen, even for a short time and unwind as you walk among the "green and leafy." Do you think a computer image of herbs allows you to enjoy the fragrance that is associated with them? Walk into our herb house and immediately you are greeted with smells that only fresh growing herbs can provide. Or how about the smell of fresh cut Christmas greens? Or the fragrance of a lemon cypress that just begs for a few bows and a star at the top to make it a perfect small tree for the holiday table.
Come into the greenhouse. Your welcome to bring your hand held devices to perhaps look up more information about the plants on display but enjoy the experiences of looking, touching and smelling the plants before you buy.
Computers are a fact of life and we tend to be dependent upon them to help us do any number of things. But don't let them take away the fun of personally selecting plants for yourself of for gift giving.
We in the greenhouse business use computers on a daily basis to take and tract orders, manage inventory, crop scheduling and to control many of the functions that keep our plants alive.
We have our own version of "Hal" tucked away in the back office to look
after greenhouse functions.
So, cyber away but be sure to temper it with some real life shopping in
a real life greenhouse.
