Not here in the San Francisco Bay Area... Retail plant sales continue to be quite good, after a slow period back in March and April which was entirely related to the extreme amount of rain those two months. Much of the plant sales are no doubt linked to the continued amount of new construction and remodeling taking place here, which hasn't been too badly effected by the slowdown of housing sales as interest rates have risen, and people have become abit more conservative of large scale spending.

Of course, California and the Southwest are a different market in that we are just now approaching prime planting season, and winter is no detriment to installing new landscaping, and fall sales at all the local botanic gardens are heavily anticipated by the locals. Here in my local area, there are diverse approaches to continued fall into winter sales, with some keeping the emphasis on plants, and others doing the holiday themed merchandising of Christmas and Halloween items. I know I would much rather patronize the nurseries that don't move out all the plants to sell Christmas trees, but that is just my personal preference.

I think it would also be useful if nurseries did more of an educational/advertising push to encourage fall plantings, and had more fall and winter interest plants featured. Its unfortunately still true that spring is the biggest season of sales for most local nurseries, as the business volume just drops off for many. No need for that in my view, as a walk through some of the local botanic gardens will show plenty of seasonal interest even in January or February here, and even November or December can look as lush, full and colorful as mid May in the garden.

I did my wholesale nursery loop on Friday in the rain covering 5 nurseries in a 60 mile loop. I do this to walk the yards and see who has what. Everyone of them was looking bare as landscape pros scramble to put plants in the ground during prime planting season. We're currently planting bulbs, peonies and bearded iris for many of our clients in addition to new installations.

Retail nurseries have mums, asters and some of the astute have fall blooming shrubs, interesting evergreens and fall blooming perennials featured. Most retail customers are thinking about Halloween and the other holidays--not their gardens at this point. It's slim pickins right now.

It must be a more regional phenomenon, as sales this season here in the PNW have been great and my nursery's fall planting sale (just finished up 10/1) had the highest sales figures of any previous sales. Especially here on the west coast where gardening is not so limited to specific seasons, I find gardeners are becoming more interested in late season planting and many are very aware that fall is an ideal time to plant virtually anything and do the majority of their plant shopping at that time, at least for major articles.

But having said that, sales do slacken at this time of year - even with all those customers that recognize the advantages to fall planting, there comes a time when the majority have completed their planting for the year and the foot traffic drops like a rock. And while we do shift the focus to more indoor products and holiday materials, the plants remain present and continue to move, although much more slowly. One way we have found to be helpful with "offseason" sales is to emphasize container plantings. May not work very well in colder winter climate locations, but fall and winter containers are a big business here and we sell scads of smaller trees, shrubs and all manner of more or less evergreen perennials and groundcovers for this purpose, as well as seasonal annual color and the containers themselves.

As far as the high gas prices are concerned, we saw more impact from that from the growers in terms of higher freight charges and even fuel surcharges. Didn't seem to affect sales much, as we are looking at a higher sales volume to finish out this year than in any previous season.

Weather has been the major issue influencing fall sales. We had four weekends in row where it rained on saturday, sunday or both weekend sales days. Needless to say retails sales slumped on the rainy days. Other wise sunny week days have been strong for both retail and wholesale sales.

As always, not an essential activity, so it doesn't take much (rain, for instance) to cut into sales.

Terrific fall sales here in the Pacific Northwest. If the sun's out we're flying around helping everybody. So much plant material is selling. Of course it's nothing near the numbers we have in spring but I think customers are learning it's an excellent time to plant. We're still bringing in new stock. We have the capability to overwinter and/or put items in a backstock area, so that really helps.

Not just an excellent time, THE excellent time - for hardy plants.