Well-tended Customers

How White Flower Manages to Keep Buyers Coming Back.

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In the mail-order nursery business, the volume houses depend on extensive marketing departments to keep bringing in new customers. White Flower Farm's marketing staff is only three people, plus owner Eliot Wadsworth II. At White Flower, the emphasis is on growing quality plants over marketing them, and on pleasing present customers over looking for new ones. Some random telephone calls to customers indicate that both of the strategies are working well.

Heather Bradley, 37, lives in the San Francisco Bay area and has been ordering from White Flower Farm for about four years. With a new vacation house to landscape, she recently placed an $1,800 order. "I first saw an ad for them in House and Garden. And when I received their catalog, it made me feel so good. Catalogs from other gardening companies don't really say much about the plants and sometimes use only the common names and not the botanical names -- and that gets confusing when you are trying to compare plants. I also like the helpful hints White Flower gives, like how to tie up gypsophila to make it compact and grow in a nicer way."

Andrew Koenig, 33, who lives in rural New Jersey, had his parents send him a copy of White Flower's catalog, The Garden Book, when he moved into a 25-year-old house on property that he describes as looking like a jungle. "I like to read anything where the English language is used well. The photographs are absolutely gorgeous. I feel I have learned quite a lot from the catalog. I'm particularly pleased by the absence of hype.We visited White Flower Farm during the fall of 1984, just when they were closing for the winter. We resolved to go back during the growing season when the chrysanthemums will be coming out.

"We ordered a lot of bulbs. Many were spectacular, but a few proved to be duds. They grew enthusiastically, but when it was time for the buds to open, they just shriveled and turned brown. I called [White Flower staff horticulturist] Landon Winchester and described the situation. He said it sounded like classic symptoms of bulbs damaged in transit by cold. I then remembered that all the bulbs that had failed had been in one shipment that had arrived just after an unexpectedly severe cold snap. They have said they will send replacements. I'm sure we'll be ordering from them again. What's important to me is they go out of their way to set things straight."

Ann Findley, 42, is a former Connecticut resident now living in Wisconsin, a gardener, she says, all her life. "One of the outstanding things about White Flower Farm is the excellent way they package their products. They wrap them in sphagnum moss and then some form of polyethylene, so the roots stay nice and moist. We have never received anything that was overheated or too wilted to plant. Their customer service is fantastic. If you ever have a problem, their records are kept so orderly that when you call, they find your order in a couple of seconds and solve your problem. If they are out of something, they don't substitute something else unless you tell them to. Their shortcoming, if they have any, is that they can't carry everything. I think the only reason I would go somewhere else would be to get a plant I couldn't get from them.

"White Flower doesn't sell you a two-inch shoot like so many catalogs. And I don't think that in the long run you are paying more money. If you start with healthy plants, if you can more or less assume that 100% will grow, and if you don't have to worry about filing a claim then I don't think that makes the price out of line. What's more, they will tell you how to plant it, what kind of soil it likes, and if it needs a lot of coddling. Their whole attitude in the catalog is very interesting. It's written by someone named Amos Pettingill. . . .There is no Amos Pettingill? You're kidding. I find that very depressing, frankly. Oh, I don't like that. I would give them an F for false advertising for that little ploy."