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Touchy, feely....all based on emotion.
What we do for a living is based on emotion. There fore our work is touch, feely.
I don't see any part of gardening like picking out wallpaper......Looking through books of pieces of wall paper.....Doing the "like that one", "Don't like that one"
To me it is about emotion.....it is about feeling good, fullfilled, etc...
I learned along time ago not to ask customers if they "Like", "Dislike" something.......Rather do they "Feel Good" about it.
As one mentioned in a post earlier regarding colors and how they affect emotions is totaly correct. Color, texture, smells all play a part in a persons emotions.
Give you an example......
I have a customer for many, many years........He never had me do any planting but would go to the local nursery and hire them......He redid the front and back section by section. No theme no rational thought given at all......But he used alot of expensive specimen material and paid for it. Wife hates it, but she gets what she wants inside......Anyway. One day I was doing some work at the house and he came out and chatted with me.
We chatted about how he had the best house on the block.....the most expensive planting in the front of the house. I most certainly agreed with him regarding the most expensive......but the best looking house? I couldn't agree with him and avoided at all cost telling what my true feelings were.
Several times I would find him and the wife in the front and I would stop and chat......Each time you could sense his aggitation, he was constantly looking and critiquing each plant and questioning me why there was a brown spot or a brown leaf or why one in the middle would grow more than the one on the left......All kinds of comments and questions like that. But the place looked like crap.
They would both walk to my house to pay me each month. One day when they arrrived this past summer I brought them into the back.....Wife was in awe at how lush the back was and how colorfull it was without annual flowers. He on the other hand thought it was over grown. But I had them sit on the lower patio. Told them I had to run in and get a pen to sign the receipt paid........I took a while.......I ran to a window where they were sitting listening to them comment about the yard........things they liked........things they didn't like...........then they got up and walked the yard. I didn't come out till they had walked the entire yard........
They were there just over 20 minutes. I came out and he said. That was fast getting the pen. I was like..........do you realize you have been in my yard more than 20 minutes?...........He was like no way.........Yeah. He looked at his watch and was like son of a gun your right. And I looked at him and said. You know you also look very relaxed......Wife looked at him and was stunned at how relaxed he was...........
20 minutes in my back yard.........listening to the waterfall from a pond at one side of my yard and the faint splashing of water onto rocks at another end of the yard. And a gentle breeze causing gentle tones from a wind chime......Seeing some butterflies, bumble bees getting thier last feeding of the day. The smells from various perennials and a couple choice annuals, herbs they picked to smell, cherry tomatoes they picked to taste......20 minutes this guy was at ease and relaxed for the entire evening. Wife called me the next day thanking me for inviting them into my yard.
This was this past June
I got a call 2 weeks ago from the husband.......Next spring he wants me to totaly redo the entire back yard and do it similar to my own back yard. The same concept.......pond and water fall, lots of plantings with perennials and raised beds, herb garden and remove a short brick wall across the back that he just had built in August. He said he still remembered how relaxing my yard was and how good he felt that evening.
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