Maackia 039: Certain things have come to light

I’m Nathan Langley and this is Maackia, a monthly newsletter hiding from the 30 degree summer heat.

I did something recently that wasn’t in line with what I normally like to do: I went to my first spring fair as a vendor. The idea wasn’t initiated by me, but I was invited to attend a small community fair two days before the event.

Despite my instincts screaming that it was a crazy idea, I pushed forward and managed to put together a handsome table with some help. The kicker was that I didn’t even have my perennials yet — I just had a smile, business cards, brochures, and some bookmark shaped cut-outs of perennials I am excited to plant this year. Basically, the essentials to get a conversation started.

Expectations were low. I certainly wasn’t going to sell anything with no inventory. But, like most of the things I do these days, I needed to push into spaces that make me uncomfortable. This was a perfect, low stakes attempt at networking within a small community.

To be blunt, I hate social media. I do my best to keep it contained to my laptop, and only use it when I have to. I deleted all of my accounts years ago, but when I opened my perennial store last year, I realized I needed Facebook and Instagram again.

Success in Sudbury is predicated on word of mouth. But I’m impatient, and trying to grow an audience online organically is a fool’s errand. The algorithm determines your fate, and it prefers to be paid up front.

With great reluctance, I advertised on Facebook and Instagram last year for a few months during the busy season. It connected me with a number of great new clients, but I couldn’t help shake the feeling that it was a waste of time.

Without paying, very few followers see my posts. And if I post something with a link, no one sees it (you have to stay inside the walled garden). So what is the point of building an audience on a platform if you have to pay every time you want to connect to those people who have specifically said they want to see your posts? Never mind directing them to your external website to make a sale.

If I go by my actions as a consumer, I couldn’t be reached on social media. But then again, I couldn’t be reached on Google either. I don’t use Google for search anymore. Yet, clearly a lot of people still do. It is Google, after all.

This year, I am cutting back on my Facebook advertising. I’m still going to do it, but I am going to try mixing in Google ads as well. I am also going to target more specifically to June and into the first week of July. August is a ghost town in Sudbury, as everyone is travelling or at camp.

It’s too hot and humid to garden by then anyway. Better to sit back and enjoy the benefits of all the work done in May and June.

However, this winter I am going to spend more time thinking about how to connect with people. More fairs? I’m already a member of the local hort. society (although I can’t seem to get them to send me their monthly newsletters). I am volunteering with the hort. society, too, when they need help maintaining local gardens.

Is a storefront really that important?

Despite trying new things that make me uncomfortable, I am still focused on developing resources I would have found useful when I was starting out as a hort. and as a garden designer.

I am currently creating space for a new garden at the front of the house, and I almost have my entire trial garden area turned over and ready for more planting. I am behind on a new version of my Northern Plant Library, but I just need to get through this month, and then there will be more time to develop that part of my website.

Even though I am behind, I am documenting everything with a camera. There is so much useful information in the garden that no one is talking about. For example, just think about flowering times. This year had a super slow start. But even taking that into account, the flowering times of the perennials I planted last year are a fair bit off from what their tags said they should be. My hellebores started flowering in the middle of May. May! And they are still flowering now.

I find this kind of information useful. It is unknown at this point whether others in northern Canadian communities will find it useful enough to pay for (it’s part of my membership program).

I keep it locked away behind a paywall for one primary reason: I don’t want it scraped by AI. I’m still not entirely sure how all these massive tech companies got away with stealing all the IP on the internet. But I digress… regardless of how they got away with it, I don’t really want to toil away for their benefit. I want to help real people with their gardens.

My guiding star continues to be the people I am currently serving. While they are few in number, they tell me repeatedly that they like what I am doing. That’s a good start.

And they keep coming back when they need help.

n