Glee Best New Product Award - Home & Gifts

[Neil Bromhall]

We're delighted that Complete Gardens CD-ROM won the prestigious Glee Trade Show (Sept 2006) Best New Product - Home & Gift section.
A Team of 15 Experts judges representing the garden & leisure industries studied the credentials of more than 280 Glee New Products in 14 categories.
To reach their decisions the judging team rated each product entry against a spread of exacting commercial and practical criteria. Considerations included product innovation, design and originality; how well products met consumer needs; and any unique features or technologies setting the product apart from competitors. Products were also judged for quality, fitness for purpose, environmental impact and value for money.

My thanks goes to everyone involved.

We'll keep trying to make improvements and add more plants.

Nice one

Neil

[allium4]

Well done. This cd really deserve to win best product of the year, I am finding mine so much more versatile than my books
Can't wait for the next one!
Allium4

[Paul Narramore]

Neil
For those of us who don't know very much at all about the CD, can you tell us more? What's on it, how would it help me, what is on it that I can't find in one of my thirty or so books on plants and gardens, how much is it. etc, etc?:confused:

[Neil Bromhall]

Hi Paul,
Without trying to sound like a sales pitch.
The Complete Gardens plant selector & pruning guide uses the CD-ROM and computer to do the searching. You can add your own notes and print them with images and you can make plants lists of the plants on the CD-ROM. I love books & Magazines and will continue to use them.
I decided to make the CD-ROM after working on the David Attenborough's Private Life of Plants. A friend of mine said that she had a splash of colour in spring but then nothing much for the rest of the year because she did not know what would grow up her garage wall, under her trees or weedy border.
It occurred to me that there was a gap in the market. I was fortunate to get Paul Williams to be one of our Authors as well as Jenny Steel (wildflowers) and horticultural experts. The other gem in the team is the programmer who could turn my ideas into a quick and easy to use plant resource. I produced & designed the CD and took the photographs
We started off with only 1,500 plants. Due to the interest I then made a 2,000 plant version then a PC & Mac compatible 2,500 version.
Our latest version has 3,000 plants and is proving popular with both students and garden designers despite the CD being designed for home use.
With climate changes we made a 2,700 plant version with Chris Beardshaw on the cover with a quote "This CD-ROM is the next best thing to having your own private gardener" Chris thinks the CD-ROM would be a great help to encourage youngsters and maybe people with learning difficulties to take up gardening as the CD-ROM is so easy to use and shows you what the plants look like and how to care & prune them.
I hope to continue making CD-ROM with more plants. I have a 3,500 version but as each version costs thousands of pounds to produce I'm holding back until more of the original CD's have sold.
Ideally I'd like to make specialist CD-ROM's on container plants, the allotment, orchids etc. Phew! I hope this helps.
This Garden Forum is on the Complete Gardens website. For more info please see www.complete-gardens.co.uk