Sink The Stink

The sheer nature of the business dictates that sometimes, things stink a little in the garden center. Between the fertilizer, pest controls – organic and chemical – and bagged goods like mulch and soil, things can get odoriferous. And not in a good way.

Tim Lamprey of Harbor Garden Center in Salisbury, Mass., told us his secret to getting the store to smell like roses, and by extension, create a better shopping experience for his customers.

“I stole this idea many years ago. One day a mother and her child came into the store. The child said ‘Ew, it stinks in here!” he recalled. “I realized that the child was correct.”

He found a product from a company called Time Mist, which is a machine that mounts on the wall. It’s about 6 inches tall and 4 inches wide and runs on two D batteries.

The machine delivers a spray of fragrance every 15 minutes. Lamprey says he uses a scent called Spring Flowers.

“Once installed, you only change the spray canister once a month. The fragrance is light enough that people want to know where the flowers are that smell so nice,” Lamprey adds. “I have been using this for about 20 years and it does make the air smell so much more like a place that should always smell like flowers.”