The Coast of Maine Image
The presentation of our product line has always been as important to us as the consistently high quality of our products themselves. When we started back in 1996, we wanted a "look" that evoked the true Yankee spirit of the "rockbound" coast of Maine - integrity, hard work, resourceful innovation and a commitment to quality. We also wanted to underline our connection to the Maine's marine traditions.

Eric Hopkins at work in his North Haven, Maine studio.

The obvious person to turn to was Eric Hopkins, a friend and well-known local artist whose work has long focused on Maine's extraordinarily beautiful coastal islands. He is a fourth generation islander who lives and works on North Haven, a rocky outcropping in the middle of Penobscot Bay. A unique aerial perspective (Eric also pilots his own small plane) allows him to study the forms and light of Maine's pristine coast from the point of view of an osprey or bald eagle. Eric is not only an artist and aviator, but also an avid gardener, so getting him on board was an easy sell. We commissioned him to paint the image gracing our very first bags and have worked with him since on several further versions including our brand new bark mulch bags making their debut this spring. Taking Eric's imagery and incorporating it on our bags, labels, ads and brochures is the work of Tina Tarr, a talented graphic artist who shares our office space atop an historic old brick building on the Portland waterfront. Tina has successfully taken Eric's images and combined them with a bold palate of color to create the now distinctive "Coast of Maine look".

Advertising and Marketing plans for 2008
The 2008 season will mark our seventh year of advertising on Paul Parent's Garden Club, a very popular Sunday morning gardening talk radio show broadcast through much of the Northeast and in other markets around the country. Click here for a listing of stations carrying the show.

Look for our products at Whole Foods Markets.

We will also continue to run a full page color ad in People Places & Plants, a wonderful gardening magazine that, like us, started in Maine and has now branched out across New England and New York. In addition, we will be placing ads in other home and garden magazines within our home markets. We will keep you posted.

We will also continue to support our independent garden centers by providing them with colorful and informative signs, brochures, posters, banners, merchandising plans and attending special events wherever possible during the busy spring season.

During 2007 we continued to expand our network of independent lawn and garden dealers across New England and in parts of New York (the Hudson Valley and Long Island) and northern New Jersey. We also added a number of important new outlets, including Whole Foods Markets in the Midwest.