Word: hawken
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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While it may be cold outside right now, the popularity of the Queen of Green, Martha Stewart, and last year's $73.6 million in sales for gardening-supply giant Smith & Hawken are clear signs that getting dirty is a full-fledged American fad. Couple that with our perpetual scramble for the latest and greatest techno gadget, and that means the more green technology, the better--everything from automated tractors to high-tech barbecue grills. After all, for aficionados, life outdoors is much more than just keeping lawns in shape and boxwoods trimmed...
...bringing the market to their gardens. In all, Americans spent nearly $26 billion last year alone, up 15.5% from the year before and $9.6 billion from five years ago. The $8.4 billion on lawns, the $3.1 billion on flowers are just the beginning. The Victorian watering cart from Smith & Hawken costs $1,500. Tiffany offers a full-size sterling-silver shovel for $9,500. Boutiques bristle with garden furniture, fountains, gargoyles, gazebos, antique Parisian paving stones and authentic-looking archaeological debris. Finally, like sailing and skiing and polo, gardening now offers the wardrobe that reeks of pedigree, clothes...
...garden for every taste and timetable. White Swan markets the Moonlight Garden, a can of seeds for flowers, mainly white, that "reflect the moon and stars," for people whose long hours mean they only get to see their gardens at night. Eighteen dollars buys a straw mat from Smith & Hawken impregnated with 8,000 wildflower seeds, which the impatient gardener can roll onto an awaiting bed of dirt. Just add water...
Among the best positioned to capitalize on the tastes -- in fact it has probably done the most to invent tastes where they didn't exist before -- is Smith & Hawken, a 16-year-old gardening purveyor that now mails out its catalog to 16 million customers. With a name reminiscent of the reliable groundskeepers of a Sussex estate and a canny sense of American snobbery, Smith & Hawken has spent the past year searching for new and wonderful ways to market $72 Haws watering cans and $42 Felco pruners. Already it has opened 15 stores, with 20 in all planned...
Last year two Smith & Hawken marketing executives set out across the English moors in search of a man known to be the last of the withie crafters. Withies are conical willow trellises used in Britain to corral sheep "We were trekking through the most remote parts of England, and we were completely lost and it was getting dark," says Bonnie Dahan. "Finally, we came upon this man's workshop, and the withies were fabulous. It was a 200-year-old design, and he was the last craftsman who made them. So we made the deal, and we carried them...