Artisans: Plants, or Gardeners?
What I Learned About Value at a Plant Fair
Over the last few months, I have chosen to focus on a few principles of the New Artisan. A weekend visit to a plant fair helped bring them to life.
Choose a domain to Master. Something that involves creation, rather than the smoke and mirrors of rentier business models.
Make something that matters, that makes a contribution to others, and that you would be happy to explain to your grandchildren.
Choose the company to keep, the people and information that will shape your practice in the years to come, those you can trust and support and who will return that with generosity.
Don’t rush. Craft takes time. It is clear already that working with AI, and eventually AGI, will be a craft for the next era.
Seek and provide Curation. Be a source of wisdom and authority for those you serve, and find those who you can trust to curate for you.
Choose who to Serve. They will amplify the work you do
When Context Whispers Different Stories
In the grounds of Felley Priory, founded in 1156, I noticed something interesting about how the exhibitors were pricing their produce. Despite being surrounded by history, heritage gardens, and an atmosphere that whispered "premium," most vendors seemed to maintain exactly the same prices they charged in their usual retail environments. I had seen several of the exhibitors a week or so earlier, in a setting that carried nothing like the "priming factor" of where they were now.
The £15 cream tea and premium parking fees weren't just operational costs—they were environmental cues that signalled "this is a place where quality commands price." Yet the market stallholder was still charging local market prices. The specialist nursery stuck to its normal premium rates. The plants themselves were largely identical—same species, similar sizes, comparable health. The setting suggested that those at the lower end of the price range could easily have charged more, and customers seemed prepared to pay it. All stalls were equally busy. People were there to buy.
This observation has stayed with me because it reveals something profound about how we understand value creation—and exposes the gap between contextual intelligence and contextual rigidity in how we price ourselves.
Choosing Our Domain with Eyes Wide Open
What I witnessed wasn't contextual pricing intelligence—it was contextual blindness. These vendors had developed such strong anchoring to their home environments that they couldn't sense into the new relational landscape they found themselves in. They'd become prisoners of their own pricing patterns.
This speaks to the first New Artisan Principle: choosing a domain to be master of. But mastery of domain isn't the same as mastery of context. These stallholders had real expertise—deep knowledge of plants, cultivation, and customer needs. Yet they struggled to translate that intelligence to new environments where different rules might apply.
The setting offered multiple signals that a different approach might be appropriate: the demographic of visitors, the premium charged for entry, the general price points of complementary vendors, even the way customers moved through the space with browsing rather than bargain-hunting energy. It's what behavioural economists call "reference point rigidity"—when our established mental models become so fixed that we can't adapt to new contextual information.
The Company We Keep Shapes What We See
Part of what I observed was how the vendors' established communities had shaped not just their pricing, but their perception. They'd become so attuned to the needs and expectations of their regular customers that they couldn't see the different needs and expectations present in the country house environment.
This connects to choosing the company you keep—but suggests we need enough diversity in our relationships that we don't become trapped by a single contextual perspective. When we only operate within one type of community, we can develop "market myopia." We become skilled at serving one context but blind to emerging opportunities in others.
Many of the visitors were heritage garden enthusiasts, plant collectors, and people for whom the experience and expertise mattered more than the price point. The vendors' usual communities had trained them to compete primarily what they were accustomed to, missing entirely the curatorial appetite present in this different environment.
When Time Allows for Different Stories
The principle of not rushing became particularly relevant as I watched the interactions unfold. The few vendors who did adjust their approach spent time just talking and sharing stories, recognising that the context was priming customers for a different kind of value exchange.
One specialist grower took time to explain the historical significance of certain varieties, the challenges of propagation, the stories behind rare specimens. This wasn't just selling plants—it was offering context, narrative, and expertise. The conversation itself became part of the value proposition, something that requires the patience to let relationships develop naturally.
The rushed vendors, by contrast, stuck to transactional interactions that would have been perfectly appropriate at a Garden Centre but missed the curatorial opportunity the setting provided. Talking with someone for a few minutes puts a flash website into the shade.
Seeking and Providing Curation in Context
Perhaps what struck me most was the missed curation opportunity. In the country house setting, visitors were primed for expertise, story, and the kind of specialised knowledge that commands premium pricing. The environment itself was curating quality and heritage.
The sellers who stood out dramatically positioned themselves as experts rather than just retailers. They told stories. They recognised that this context wasn't just about selling plants—it was about providing authority and wisdom in a setting that valued both.
This kind of contextual curation requires several capacities: environmental sensing (reading the cultural signals), value translation (understanding how expertise might be perceived differently), and positioning flexibility (adapting presentation whilst maintaining core practice).
Choosing Who to Serve, and Where
The final principle—choosing who to serve—extends to choosing where to serve them. The stallholders who sold out early had consciously aligned their positioning rather than simply accepting any opportunity to sell.
The lesson isn't that everyone should charge premium prices, but that we need to develop the intelligence to recognise when we're operating in contexts where our value can be recognised and compensated differently. True mastery includes the ability to maintain deep expertise whilst developing contextual fluency.
The day demonstrated the difference between contextual rigidity and contextual responsiveness. The rigid brought their established patterns regardless of where they found themselves. The responsive maintained their core values and expertise whilst adapting to the new environment.
Developing Contextual Fluency
This plant fair observation opens several lines of inquiry:
Environmental Sensing: How do we read the cultural and economic signals of new contexts rather than defaulting to familiar patterns? What practices help us stay alert to contextual opportunities?
Value Translation: When we've developed expertise in one environment, how do we recognise and communicate that value in settings where different rules apply?
Positioning Flexibility: How do we maintain the integrity of our core practice whilst adapting to contextual opportunities? Where's the line between responsiveness and opportunism?
Strategic Context Selection: What criteria help us select venues and communities that align with our positioning? How do we avoid accepting all opportunities equally?
Curatorial Adaptation: How do we present our expertise differently in contexts that prime for different kinds of authority?
Perhaps the deeper lesson is this: true mastery includes the intelligence to recognise when context invites us to express our expertise differently, whilst maintaining the wisdom to know which invitations align with our deeper purpose.
Each context whispers different stories about what's valued, how expertise is recognised, and what kinds of relationships are possible. Learning to hear those whispers—and respond appropriately—may be one of the most valuable skills an artisan can develop.
Perhaps we can use this as a starting point on our call tomorrow…
If you are not a member of the Outside the Walls Group and would like to join us, drop me a line, and I’ll send you a link. Our next conversation is tomorrow (Wednesday 14th May) evening 5:00 pm UK time.
There is no charge - we want to hear your voice, not take your money