Spring is on its way — that is the sentiment from shoppers whenever they first see garden seed displays in stores. Garden seeds are a great selling category for today’s floral departments because they produce high margins, fast turns and no initial product investment. Plus, your customers appreciate the one-stop shopping of being able to make their flower and vegetable seed selections while visiting your floral department.

The current trend in fresh foods is locally produced crops. What better way to achieve this than to control one’s own foods from seed to table? Gardening is not only America’s favorite pastime but it is rapidly becoming the “in” way to produce and control your own seed-to-table path. This can be as simple as growing a few fresh herbs on a windowsill to include in cooking, to a full-blown organic garden that can yield an abundance of tasty produce to preserve for winter enjoyment. Not to mention all of the glorious flowers that can be grown from seeds and their blossoms harvested to be enjoyed indoors or given as gifts.

Garden seeds are usually sold on guarantee-sale terms to stores. Fully stocked displays are shipped during winter/early spring and stores are billed for the sold seeds around August. Where else can you get a fully stocked display and not pay for it until after it’s all been sold?

On average, the smallest one-panel seed display of about four square eet should turn sales of around $550. These displays can grow to any size or type to fit any department or idea imaginable.

Seed displays are offered in many different options, from traditional flower and vegetable mixtures in numerous different display sizes, to the current trend of stocking vegetable-only displays. Some niche options can include:

• A panel of organic vegetables and some edible flowers — or heirloom favorites, which are currently very popular with consumers.

• Some of the more in-demand varieties can be merchandised in large, economy-size packets or even in full panels.

• One specialty product, that sells very well because of the value added, is seed tape vegetables — seeds in a biodegradable fiber tape that the gardener just rolls out and covers up with soil — for a perfectly spaced row of vegetables.

• Another area of strong interest today is wildflowers. They are packaged in single varieties or in a theme mixture for broadcast planting.

There are numerous products that can be cross-merchandised in a floral department to assist customers in producing a rewarding garden.

• Indoor herb gardens are popular and come in many variety mixtures and growing containers, including complete windowsill options.  

• Seed-starting products can include small seed-starter peat pots in various sizes, and plastic cell-trays for starting plants indoors and hardening them off before placing them in the garden. These items are offered in various materials — plastic, peat, and newer biodegradable product options.

• If space allows, you can also include grow lights (in both incandescent and LED options), along with heated grow trays, which will add substantially to your bottom line.

If you are not presently stocking garden seed displays in your floral department, you might want to consider taking advantage of this zero initial cost, high-margin product with fast turns to generate additional, effortless floral sales.

Steve Nichols in the owner of Sunshine Sales Inc. in Anoka, MN. He can be contacted at [email protected].