Garden Conservancy’s Open Days — Nonprofit marketing
What is Open Days?
Open Days is the main outreach program of the Garden Conservancy, a nonprofit organization with the mission “to preserve, share, and celebrate America's gardens and diverse gardening traditions for the education and inspiration of the public.”
Each year the Open Days program invites the public to participate in this mission by organizing private and public garden visits on special days called, as you may have guessed — “Open Days.”
During Open Days, garden visitors are treated to the opportunity to tour exceptional gardens throughout the country, many that are rarely open to the public. Pop-up nurseries, talks, and workshops by gardening experts and designers make these garden-visiting experiences extra special.
Open Days Directory
The Open Days Directory is a 300+ page, soft-cover book published annually and served as Open Days’ primary promotional product.
Garden visitors purchased the Directory to learn which gardens they could visit on which dates and what additional fun they could take part in, whether that be a special plant sale, a garden talk, or a workshop. Garden Conservancy members receive this book as a perk.
I designed the Open Days Directory from 2006 to 2017, evolving and strengthening the brand and making the content more user friendly with each edition.
The 2016 book was a major redesign using a new set of typefaces with a cleaner and more cheerful feel and importantly, saved on ink. Other new features include maps, a focus on color photographs (previous editions were mostly black and white), iconography, and more sustainable paper.
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Open Days Pre-Book Release promotional Brochure
This pre-book-release promotional piece highlighted the upcoming year's events and also reminded the public of the Garden Conservancy’s core mission.
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Additional Open Days Marketing Materials
To further promote the garden-visiting season and market the Open Days Directory, I designed direct mail pieces, emails and ads, and administered webpages.
I created the branding, brand voice, graphic assets, and curated photos.
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Direct Mail
Advertisements
Emails
Open Days Volunteer Recruitment materials
Open Days relies on its vast network of gardener volunteers were always eager to welcome new garden hosts into the program.
During my time working with Open Days, the majority of volunteers (and garden visitors) preferred print and old-school communication, so having information available online as well as in print format was very important. Surveys were conducted to track the evolution of this preference.
I designed online content including downloadable documents that explained how people could get involved and forms to submit their interest.
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Open Days Volunteer and Garden Visitor Badges
The Open Days Program supplies garden owners who have volunteered to share their garden with the public with all the materials needed to participate in their garden tours. These materials are packaged into ‘Host Kits’ and include directional signs to post on the street, signs to posts in their garden, admissions table signs, admission tickets to sell, garden visitor registers, badges, etc. which I designed. I also designed some street and pop-up banners for larger signature gardens.
These are Open Days badges/buttons to be worn by the garden host, volunteers, and Digging Deeper guests. Young garden visitors got a Garden Sprout sticker.
Open Days Digging Deeper Events Promotion
When Open Days began organizing a critical mass of garden talks and workshops on a consistent basis, they created “Digging Deeper” — an umbrella program that housed all of Open Days’ experiential events.
I designed the branding, emails, web content, and ads to promote Digging Deeper events, as well as a visual system to include them in the Open Days Directory.
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Open Days and Garden Conservancy Logo Refresh
Top: Open Days logo / Bottom: Garden Conservancy logo
The Garden Conservancy asked me to “improve the health” of the sun in both the Open Days logo (shown at the top) and the Garden Conservancy logo (shown on the bottom) without “changing anything.”
The newer versions were welcomed as much more cheerful and inviting!