What if I….. had a house plant business?

 

We all have ideas and hopes of creating our own brands, and I for one constantly find inspiration everywhere I look. But as I can’t start a new business every time inspiration hits, I have started the ‘What If I’ blog series, simply for my own entertainment and to be able to explore, imagine and design my own brands and products that will never hit the shelves.

 

Plants through the post? Is that a good idea?

It’s something I have always been a bit dubious of: I’ve always just imagined receiving my order and rushing excitedly to open the parcel only to reveal the inside of the box pebble-dashed with soil and grit, and a once lovely but now smashed up plant, strewn helplessly across the bottom resulting in some sort of horticultural Jackson Pollock. Am I totally misguided in my opinion? well, I had the chance to find out.

A few months ago it was a lovely wife’s birthday. Like the good husband I am, I got up early, made some pancakes, gathered the cards and presents that have been stacking up over the couple of weeks previous, and (like the only sensible thing to do) slowly wobbled back upstairs trying to carry everything in one go.

One generous gift received was a gift card for ‘Urban Herbs’, an online plant shop which seemed to excite her more than the vinyls I lovingly picked out for her (obviously).

Website perused, herbs picked, order placed, and we waited patiently.

I’m happy to announce that our plants arrived safely, and not only that, are thriving! I now definitely have a lot more confidence in ordering postal plants, but maybe everyone else already does? These businesses exist because of customers and surely not everyone is as cynical as me. It’s a great idea and one idea I could certainly run with.

I’ve created my brand ‘The Interior Gardener’ and have focused on the houseplant market. I used a colour palette of greens and yellow inspired by the plants, and the terracotta and peach of the pots. The logo has touches of leaf shapes and I have created a series of flat vector illustrations of various house plants that would appear on the packaging and on care cards supplied with each plant.

I like the contrast of the vector based illustrations and the close up imagery for marketing and social media, still using touches of the colour palette on the edges, and slogans to make it more approachable and fun.

Right, my business is sorted, now I just need to figure out how to propagate plants correctly, as most of my previous attempts have ended up shrivelled like prunes; just a minor set-back I think…