Brand Support

Display & Best Practices Tips

• Farmer’s market appeal. Fill wood crates and carts with fresh produce from the supermarket. Show customers what they’ll soon be harvesting themselves!
• Vegetable gardening is generational. Decorate your vegetable area with historic family photos. Grandma can sell your stock.
• Calling all foodies! Merchandise your vegetable plants next to cookbooks, cooking utensils, kitchen décor and more. Create recipe themes and combinations and satisfy gourmet palates. Popular themes: Pizza, Salsa, Grilling, Tea.
• Create edible ornamental mixed designs. Use large patio pots filled with taller-growing vegetables, mid-range herbs and runner strawberries. Filler-Spiller-Thriller veggie-style! Place them in front of your store.
• Sell convenience of potted plants. Offer Burpee "To Go" larger-size containers of garden- and recipe-ready herb and vegetable pots. Small-size and urban gardeners will thank you.
• Hype the health. Fresh vegetables and gardening exercise is the perfect way to a healthy mind and spirit. Partner with local dentists and doctors. After a check-up, have them present a coupon to kids for a free vegetable plant at your store.
• Don’t forget hanging baskets. Some vegetables work well in hanging baskets and look appealing, too. Try displaying cherry tomatoes (tumbler varieties) and runner strawberries. Their plant habits will spill over the sides – and keep them up and away from nibbling garden pests.

In-Store Event Ideas

Chef Series

Go after the gardening foodies! Partner with your local restaurants or grocery store and host a Chef Series. Feature hometown chefs cooking with the fresh produce your customers can grow themselves. Present the recipe at the end of each cooking demonstration, and make it available at your website, too.

Tasting Events - Tomato

Choosing which tomato to grow can be overwhelming. Take away the guesswork for your customers. Host taste-testing events where they can sample fresh produce and understand the many uses each variety offers. Explain the differences between “slicers”, “beefsteak”, “hors d’oeuvres” and “sauce” tomatoes. (Find a helpful chart here.)

Tasting Events

Pepper How hot is HOT? Get familiar with the Scoville scale. It measures the heat of chili peppers. The scale is named after Wilbur Scoville who developed the test in 1912. At your pepper taste-test, present a wide variety of recipes and hot flavors to customers - from sauces to salsas - and help them feel the burn!

No Space? No Problem!

You don’t need an acre of land to grow fresh vegetables. Satisfy those customers with limited space but unlimited appetites for gardening! Host a container-garden weekend, with a mixture of herbs and container-friendly vegetables on display. Be sure to showcase window boxes, sunny patio pots and vertical gardens. Share tips at your website and in-store.

Cool Season Extender

Vegetable gardening in the early-spring and fall months not only extends your sales season, it helps customers get out in the garden earlier and stay out later! Highlight the vegetable varieties that can take a bit of frost, such as lettuces, Brussels sprouts, kales, cabbage. Offer cloches and cold frames, or at least the materials list for gardeners to build their own.