GardenSite Works with Manx Wildlife Trust on their Puffin Project

Vivid Arts is a wonderful resin ornament brand that has retailed on GardenSite since the early 2000s. Their products have always been very popular both online and in-store at our Garden Centre, Hall’s, where we sell a selection of their animal ornaments and birdboxes to our local community of customers in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham. 

Despite the excellent craftsmanship that goes into creating each individual ornament to ensure a realistic and lifelike replica, in 2022, the Marketing team at GardenSite embarked on a mission to further bring the brand to life for online customers who are looking at the products through a screen, as opposed to in person. We decided to take our own images of the ornaments in and around the Garden Centre grounds which proved very successful, giving the ornaments the representation and portrayal they deserve. Since then, we have enjoyed an increase in sales and have even attracted international customers which led us to send Vivid Arts ornaments to locations all over the world, including Denmark, Turkey, India and China. You can read more about this project here: GardenSite’s Vivid Arts Range Becomes Even More… Vivid!

One of the most recent and memorable interactions was with Dr. Lara Howe, a Marine biologist who is currently working as a Conservation Officer with Manx Wildlife Trust on a special project to reintroduce puffin colonies to the Calf of Man. The programme uses model decoys of the seabirds - the Vivid Arts Puffin Ornament - to trick young birds into thinking that the Calf of Man is an active, successful breeding site, thus encouraging juvenile puffins to come in from the sea to prospect the area. Taking it one step further, the Manx Ornithological Society positioned speakers on the east coast site to play the sound of puffin calls in an effort to further attract young birds.

As of today, GardenSite has sent over 50 Vivid Arts puffin ornaments to Dr. Howe in the Isle of Man. We are honoured to be a part of this incredible project and would like to thank Dr. Howe for being so kind to send us photographs of the puffins in situ - we think you will agree just how unbelievably lifelike they look, so much so that Manx Wildlife Trust are delighted to report early signs of potential success of this decoy colony.

It is important to give thanks to the amazing team at Vivid Arts who ensure the high quality of their products to create very realistic replica animal models. The puffin ornaments have a very lifelike appearance, boasting brightly coloured, parrot-like bills, white bellies and cheeks and orange webbed feet, hence why they were chosen as the decoy seabird of choice. 

If you would like to find out more about Dr. Lara Howe and her fascinating ‘Puffin Project’, you can read all about it here: Puffin Project - Manx Wildlife Trust. You can also view the entire Vivid Arts range of animal ornaments on our website which includes tigers, leopards, tortoises, sheep, dogs, cats and more!