November 2023
ertonline.co.uk
“It just demonstrated how much of a place technology has to play in various spaces both indoors and outdoors. And generally in the UK we shadow the key trends and technologies from the USA, so we knew that outdoor living was going to be big.”
It was at that point that Potters started collaborating with Laura Anstiss, an RHS Chelsea award-winning designer and Director of Oakmore Green Garden Landscape Design. Then, with involvement from several other professional partners, the Smart Home Garden was born. The smart lighting throughout is supplied by Lutron; the transformation of the garden in the evening is seriously impressive. Other partners include Future Automation, Watermatic and Luume Fires, to name just a few, to bring complementary technology to the space and highlight some truly bespoke solutions.
Another key area is the outdoor dining area, complete with pizza ovens, a wine fridge and a Big Green Egg ceramic charcoal barbecue. Plus there’s a fully kitted-out smart garden office that came from local company, Garden Getaways.
Adds Mr Jones: “It is a show garden, but interlaced with a humongous amount of technology like smart benches, automated water features and even fire tables with built-in wireless chargers, speakers and lighting. We haven’t just plonked a bunch of speakers outside for the sake of it.”
People travel from all over to visit the garden, which is by appointment only, and the retailer gets a lot of B2B interest from landscape designers, architects and property developers.
“What’s on show here is both an educational experience but also a very immersive tour and it creates those aspirational thoughts for anyone who visits,” says Mr Jones.
Q&A
Q: Talk us through some of the tech you’ve got installed around the garden. Alex Jones: We’ve got Sonance speakers all around the garden – we have a really great partnership with them. We use a surround sound processor from Marantz plus a James PowerPipe subwoofer that’s hidden in the flower bed. Everything is controlled remotely by URC. On the wall [concealed behind a pair of stylish automated metal doors] is our 75-inch Samsung Terrace QLED TV. It’s an impressive bit of kit; the picture quality is always so clear and bright, even in direct sunlight. There were a few other TV options at the time ranging from £12,000 to £18,000 for a 75-inch screen, but then Samsung swooped in with the £6,000 Terrace just as we started on the garden, so the timing was perfect. They were obviously reading the trends in the US and that just signified that we were on the right path!
Q: What’s the response been like to the introduction of the Smart Home Garden, and how’s business been for you since opening? AJ: We set ourselves some very ambitious goals for this year. The last couple of months have been harder and enquiries have been slower; the mid-market has seen the most squeeze I think, whereas the high end doesn’t really get affected. But as a whole the year has been good. The custom installation market can be a bit of a roller coaster. Some projects can take a huge amount of time to deliver so that’s why it’s nice having an underpinning of some core retail solutions in the store, albeit it’s a small percentage of our actual turnover these days. >>
35
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40
