Farewell to DYG

In 2008 we had the idea of making an online garden centre. We had been designing and planting gardens for several years and we had steadily built up relationships with some great growers around the country. Often, when we were planting a garden, people would ask us where we got our plants and.... could they buy some too? So we set about organising the plants that we knew and liked into logical categories and, with the help of the very patient Shane Magee (now Nirbhasa) we built the website DYG (Delivering Your Garden) so that people all over Ireland could browse and purchase plants from us. The gargantuam task of writing plant descriptions, taking photos and arranging began. Every spare moment of every day and night went into researching, writing and uploading information, mainly based on what we had learned from our work as gardeners. A lot of the photos are taken of plants 'in context' rather than in pots on benches, and as many of them as possible are taken in Irish gardens. The camera was in constant use and no opportunity was passed to take a photo of a garden-worthy plant happily growing. But a few days after going live, sure enough, a complete stranger came across our site and bought some plants. A new era of 'Dyg Orders' began, heralded by a little ping in the inbox which made life terribly exciting. 'Dyg Orders' became an everyday phrase in our household, the cause of a sudden injection of excitiment and adrenalin each and every time one came through. Little could any customer imagine, when ordering online, that at the other end the order is received with such a thrill. This is the great thing about the internet: all over the world there are 'cottage' websites that are in fact as personal, vital and small-scale as any shop. No need for all the complicated trappings involved in running a shop - you can, quite literally, run your business from your kitchen table.

We operated on a shoestring and ran the business from home, buying plants from suppliers as soon as they were ordered on our website. Logistically, this was very complicated: someone would always order a plant just after we had a delivery from one grower, so we would have to place another order. Soon, our stock of plants grew and grew until we were surrounded at home by many hundreds of plants. Our sheds and house were filled with garden supplies and we had a never-ending string of vans delivering and collecting plants from us. Our suppliers and growers were always understanding and patient. We had plenty of regular, returning customers and a growing amount of new ones too. We got more efficient with deliveries and started using DPD for almost all deliveries - they are organised, fast and careful, so we very rarely had any problems with deliveries getting damaged or going astray.

An early version of DYG when we were still working on the layout - done by us, not a web designer!

The aim of the website was not just to sell things, but to allow people to research too. Sometimes it can be a little overwhelming in a garden centre: so many plants, distracting things in bloom, promotional material. On line, you could look at plants and make informed decisions. Does this grow is the sun? Does that plant survive damp soil? What would look good under that tree? The website was filled with tips and advice and articles about gardening in Ireland. Each month the number of visitors to the site, and the number of customers, grew and grew. We added more and more items so that we were selling landscape supplies such as bark, topsoil and roll out grass. We added Biohort sheds, Springfree Trampolines, chestnut fencing, Hotlogs and many other items. By 2013 we had about 16,000 unique visitors per month and had sent out over 5,500 orders. The longer we had the website the more people tried to find us in real life. We had a steady string of people who wanted to collect their plants or supplies, and our home was getting increasingly crowded with stuff. One day when we were passing through Monkstown we spotted an old hire centre that was to let (Action Hire) which had a large yard to one side. This would be the perfect place to store all our stock and also to have a real-life shop that people could easily visit.

Retail websites need to change regularly in just the same way that shops themselves do. It is easy enough to add new products but much harder to alter the way they are arranged. We designed DYG in Photoshop or Illustrator and then gave it to Nirbhasa to 'make come alive'. It gave the website a nice home made feel which some people really liked. But it also made it a bit awkward to find your way around: there was simply too much going on and you get get easily lost.

The website by March 2014 when we had 15,000 unique visitors per month and had sent out over 5000 orders

In May of 2012 we opened our shop in Monkstown and were confused as to what to call it. DYG sounded a bit wrong for a shop, so we called it after ourselves - Howbert & Mays Gardens (Howbert being Anthea and Mays being Tig). As garden designers we had been using this name for many years, and all along we had been keeping this side of the business going: in fact, it was the gardening, planting, designing and maintenance that funded DYG and allowed it to grow. DYG continued to prosper and we quickly realised that despite the wonders of online shopping, people really love to see and feel things too. A good chunk of our customers were (and are) web customers who do their research at home and the actual spending and double-checking in the shop. For some it was just a bit confusing. Is this the same shop as DYG? Is everything that's on DYG in the shop? Is everything in the shop on DYG? So we decided that the time had come to roll parts of the business into one name, and it was the name above the shop door that would be the name of the website too. The aim of the new website is to make navigation simpler. The 'shop' part is on the left where all the different categories are arranged. The 'information' part is on the top, with links to portfolio, design advice, contact information and so on.

Here we are then. Howbert & Mays is the new DYG. In fact, it's exactly the same thing but with a less cluttered layout and easier navigation. It has the same content and the same range of stock.... just differently arranged.

Our new home page, March 2014

Early versions of the home page, made by us on Photoshop or Illustrator.