Get to know Jim Putnam

Photo courtesy of Jim Putnam

JP: When I started the channel, I still had my nursery. Even after I closed the nursery, I still had my garden center. I was actually making these videos for my customers, so with my initial videos, I had no thoughts of this being any kind of thing that could be a career. I would tell the customer ‘I have a video for this if you want to go and watch it if that helps you.’ Then other people were watching them outside of that area. Soon I had people driving long distance to come to the garden center.

NM: How do you choose which plants to talk about? Do you do collaborations?

JP: In terms of plants, it’s just whatever I’m planting in my own landscape here, or if I’m visiting a nurseryman or a horticulturalist in the business, it’s whatever they’re excited about at that time. I am including plants from the Southern Living Plant Collection and Encore Azalea and the Sunset Plant Collection, so I’m doing content for Plant Development Services embedded in my content.

NM: Did you anticipate growing such a huge following?

JP: No, I had no thoughts about it. I would put up a video, and it would have 25 views and 13 of them were probably me over the course of a month or two. Then it just started to grow. Of course the pandemic had some impact on it a couple years ago. There were so many new people searching for gardening videos.

NM: So what is it like being a social media influencer?

JP: (laughs) When you’re behind the camera, you don’t really think about the fact that 50,000 people might watch that video. You’re just shooting a video. So for me, I don’t really think about it. Only occasionally, I’m out and about, in a Lowe’s, a garden center or something like that, and somebody will approach me and then I go ‘oh okay, I do have an impact out there,’ other than some comments at the bottom of a video from people. I’m not somebody who typically stands up in front of big groups. The camera is just different. You’re alone or you’ve got a videographer, and you’re shooting a video. You don’t feel any pressure. I’m not really going ‘oh, look at me I have 188,000 subscribers.’ It’s not even in my mind (laughs). The first thousand subscribers were pretty exciting. I’m super happy to have this many subscribers, but it hasn’t changed me or the way I think about the content.

NM: Which videos are the most popular?

JP: Definitely how tos. The biggest search engine on the planet is Google and the second biggest search engine on the planet is YouTube. A big percentage of all searches on YouTube start with how to. If it’s how to plant in clay soils or how to prune an azalea, whatever it is, those are going to be, over a long period of time, your most watched videos. They might not be [your most watched] that day because somebody doesn’t necessarily need that information that day, but it will always be relevant information. It gets searched over a long period of time.

NM: What is your favorite part of doing this?

JP: When I’m doing consultations, I can see that I’m creating organic gardeners who have an appreciation for pollinators and have an appreciation for only using lawn where it’s necessary. I can see that I’m changing people’s opinions. They might be thinking about a waterwise garden. Those are things I’ve tried to influence without using a sledgehammer. I’ve just kind of subtly tried to move people in that direction. That’s part of the drive for me now, is that I can hopefully change people’s environmental thought, how they think about their garden as part of a bigger world.

NM: What is your advice to others who want to start something like this?

JP: Start it because you’re passionate about it, so that your passion can drive you and not the money because it takes a long time to build a channel. There’s more people than ever doing it, so it will be even harder than it was for me five years ago. If you went into it saying ‘I’m just going to have fun with it, and if anything ever comes from that, great.’ Then I think you would be happier in the process of doing it than thinking ‘how can I make money at this?’ Also, I get a lot, and I mean a lot, of offers to hawk things on my channel. I turn down multiple offers a day because I don’t want people to think that you’ve got to spend a fortune to be out gardening. I think you should invest money in plants that you really want, but the rest of it should be inexpensive. I think if you were really driven hard to make a career out of it, you might fall victim to hawking too many things, at which point you’re going to turn people off.

FOR MORE: visit HortTube with Jim Putnam on YouTube and visit his new channel, Garden plants with Jim Putnam, where he covers individual plant varieties.