Does your Facebook page have 74 million 'likes' or are there 806,000 people talking about you?  Didn’t think so. But that doesn’t mean your garden brand can’t utilize Facebook just as well as the front runners in social media.

Though Facebook isn’t a ‘professional social network,’ it does boast 1.1 billion monthly users and 4.5 billion daily likes.  You can’t argue with numbers like that.  Facebook isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Here are five easy tips to solve the problems your business may be facing, inspired by some of Facebook’s best and brightest brands.

Today's Garden Center is showcasing Garden Media Group's six major consumer shifts along with several lower level trends that will impact garden purchases in its 2014 Garden Trends Report.

The overall theme, the report says, is finding balance. Each Thursday GROW! will now showcase and delve into a new garden trend of 2014.

Be sure to download the 2014 Trends Report to learn the details and forces behind each trend--and how your business can integrate the 2014 garden trends to grow your business.

Big or small, no business is guaranteed a fruitful financial year. In fact, maintaining your popularity with customers is hard work--and you always need to be ten steps ahead.

A new study, released this week, surveyed professionals about the next 10 years of marketing.

Read on to discover what your garden business needs to remain thriving (and relevant) in ten years.

Once your brand has been defined and broadcast across regional and national media outlets, you need to ensure that your garden business stays the center of attention.

To gurantee that your product is not a one hit wonder, you have to strategically market your brand to be the new must-have item, year after year.

Consumers are constantly vying for the cutting edge, so make sure you and your gardening influencers are afoot of this year's trends.

By connecting your gardening brand and product to annual trends, you'll remain the apple of the media (and your consumers') eye!

So, you've got everyone on board with your new gardening brand. You know how to describe your brand in three simple words; and, you've answered the 4 W's.

Now, you've have to work on making the world love your gardening brand.

To do this, you've got to get your brand in front of local and national media. 

The best way to ensure you get placements on t.v., magazines, and newspapers is to humanize your garden brand. 

With the amount of time we spend thinking about all things gardening and marketing, it's easy to forget one of the most integral aspects of success in a business: you.

As the leader of a successful business, I know you take work home with you -especially during the busiest season of the year.

For gardeners, early spring is the time when flowers, seeds, soils, and chic containers are flying off the shelf.

Well, we think it's time to take a brief mental break from sales increases.

In order for your garden business to be successful, you need to learn the importance of self-care.

Congratulations! Since you have outlined your three branding words, you're on the way to creating a stellar brand.  You know who you want to be, and now, you've just got to figure out how to get there.

It's time to describe who your brand is in more detail.

The easiest way to define your brand is by answering the 4 W's of your garden brand.

Part 2:

As promised, we are back with part 2 of our blog post “10 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a PR Firm”. We left half of the very important questions unanswered, and thankfully, they’re answered here. It is important that all of these questions and answers are read so businesses understand how a PR firm operates and how to make sure that they understand the services being offered. After all, as you’ll find out below, PR isn’t necessarily cheap and it is essential to make sure your hard earned dollars go towards an effective cause.

It is great if you can create some of your own questions as well so that you can tailor them to your PR needs. But if you need some ideas for questions to ask a PR firm before you hire them, take a look at part 2 below.

As a business, of course, you need to sell your product. But, being a business means far more than just your net profit.

Let's face it, if that's all your focused on, you're going to miss a trillion little steps that will get you to that point.

When it comes right down to it, the people who buy your product run your business. Scary, right? But, it doesn't have to be!

Follow our tips below to make sure you and your garden business are fostering a lifetime of customer l-o-v-e. If your customers love your product, then you'll be in a prosperous business forever!

By Chuck Bowen

Editor, Lawn & Landscape

One of the things we do at Lawn & Landscape is provide landscape contractors with practical information that helps them run their business better. And the best way to do that is to help you better understand your customers.

So late last year, we conducted the first major post-recession survey of homeowners’ perceptions of the landscape industry. We asked more than 850 homeowners across the country why they buy landscape and lawn care services, what they think of contractors, and how they decide what to spend on improving their green spaces.

Their answers might surprise you.