About The Author

Jacqueline D’Elia earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Horticulture from Texas A&M and has been working in the ecommerce and technology related industries since 1985. In 2000, she founded Olive Barn®, a sustainable garden and home store and started selling on the web. The idea came when looking for a way to combine her expertise in ecommerce with her love of gardening. She designed, built and maintains the content on the website which runs on the Yahoo Store platform.

Jacqueline is the author of the Olive Barn blog, Growing Green + Living It, Southern Post Journal, and her Houston Chronicle blog, Boxed Dirt. She is an organic gardener and  helps others in Houston Texas, as a garden coach.

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Not only does she write the content for these blogs, she designed Southern Post Journal and Growing Green + Living It, using The Thesis Theme for WordPress. She is an amateur photographer and has an eye for macro photography, most of which can be found on her Southern Post Journal blog.

“Good photography helps tell a story and attract readers.”, she notes. “A poorly designed site can be a distraction that frustrates readers and leads to site abandonment. I think a professional garden blog should read like a your favorite garden magazine. Rich content, easy to read fonts, a crisp white background, and of course lots of pictures.”

Many independent garden centers are facing stiff competition from box stores who are now honing in on publishing advice and sharing expertise from freelance bloggers through their own garden blogs. Independents have traditionally been known as the place to go to ask questions, and talk to real gardeners.  It would seem that the goal of these Box Store Garden blogs is an attempt to level the playing field.

Independent garden centers have a wealth of local expertise that could easily be shared on a garden blog they publish. Most gardeners search online for answers BEFORE coming to a garden center. By not publishing a blog, you are missing an opportunity to attract readers and ultimately, loyal customers. Writing a newsletter is not enough anymore. Create an EDUCATIONAL HUB that can be searched and referenced by your readers and you’ll soon find them visiting your garden center.