With a new year upon us, we are excitedly going over our plans and goals for 2020. As you may already know via my last post, we have closed our Canton location, and are focusing on Remington and our upcoming Woodberry studio space. Without giving you our entire business plan for the year, I wanted to mention a couple things that we are currently working on: providing more plant care / botanical information, and how to help us give back to environmental initiatives around the world.
If you’ve visited us in person, you’ve likely gotten to observe the importance we place on engagement and education. Our shop is not only a place to purchase plants, but to engage with our staff to answer your questions or to use our re-potting table. Whether it’s figuring out which plants will be suitable for your space, what to expect as they grow and age, how to repot your plants, or how to tell when they’re unhappy and what to do to mitigate adverse effects, we are here to help you! We sincerely hope that all of the plants that leave our shop have a long life, with the potential to be passed on for generations. We love hearing stories about the plants you’ve inherited- whether it’s a cutting from a friend, or a 6ft tall ficus from your grandmother. Nurturing your plants is rewarding, gratifying and therapeutic- things we all need! Not only do we plan to continue to provide one-on-one education in shop, but we plan to provide even more information and guidance through social media and blog posts (including video content!). Our goal is to give you the tools to come into the shop knowing which plants would do well in your space, and how to care for them. Just a quick PSA- as we receive a ton of emails, facebook messages, instagram messages, etc. every day, we can’t always reply to them as quickly as we’d like. Calling us or stopping by to chat is the best way to get fast answers to your plant q’s!
Next on the agenda is a subject that is incredibly saddening for obvious reasons, but something that we must be vocal about. The environmental atrocities happening in Australia are mind blowing, extremely disconcerting, and paralyzing. Hearing reports of half a billion species dying from the fires is so shocking that it’s almost impossible to internalize. It doesn’t feel real. If you’ve followed along with us over the years, you may have read how my overall career/life goal is to help society foster more of a connection to the “more than human world.” Our hope is that this connection then leads to more concern, motivation, and actions to help restore our planet. We are inherently linked to our natural surroundings- we cannot survive without maintaining healthy ecosystems…but with infrequent daily connection to other species and lifeforms, our environment is not often prioritized as it should be. The first step we are taking is to begin encouraging our shoppers to round up or donate any amount to WIRES, a non-profit in Australia working to rescue wildlife hurt by ongoing environmental atrocities. If every customer rounds up their purchase, we could begin making a serious impact. We also plan to host on-going fundraising events throughout the year, from guest speakers to social hours. Though we feel passionate about causes of all genres, we are specifically interested in raising awareness of environmental degradation and how to help. If you have an idea or want to suggest an environmental-minded group for us to partner with, please send them my way! Liz@bwillow.com is the best way to reach me. This is just the beginning!
Cheers to 2020. Let’s make this a year for giving back, facing up to the realities of climate change, and doing our part to preserve our environment for future generations.
Thanks for reading!
Liz Vayda, Owner & Operator