How Frantoio Grove secured 10 media placements through gardening expert PR
Patrick Martin, Frantoio Grove
Gardening and regenerative agriculture expert PR
Frantoio Grove wanted to increase its online visibility and build greater awareness of the family-run California olive farm beyond its existing customer base.
The business had a particularly strong asset in Patrick Martin. As a sixth-generation Californian farmer working hands-on with a regenerative olive orchard, Patrick could contribute credible expertise on horticulture, soil health, planting, pollinators, seasonal garden care and regenerative agriculture. Frantoio Grove itself is a certified organic and Regenerative Organic Certified farm and mill in San Martin, California.
Over a three-month PR campaign, we used Patrick’s expertise to position him as a source for journalists covering gardening, homes and outdoor living. Across the campaign records that can be used publicly, this resulted in 10 published media placements across seven media brands, including Homes & Gardens, Country Living UK, House Beautiful, Ideal Home, Woman & Home and Express.co.uk.
The client
Frantoio Grove is a family-run olive farm and mill based in San Martin, California.
The orchard was planted in 2005 by Patrick’s father, Jeff Martin, a fifth-generation Californian farmer. Patrick, the sixth generation, had been around the farm since the orchard was first established before pursuing a career in coffee roasting and café management. He later returned to farming full-time and helped take the business further into regenerative agriculture.
The 30-acre farm grows predominantly Frantoio olives, a Tuscan cultivar chosen for the distinctive style of oil it produces. Frantoio Grove mills its olives on-site and focuses on fresh, high-polyphenol extra virgin olive oil alongside a wider range of farm products.
Its farming approach also created a strong expertise platform. Patrick writes extensively about soil biology, regenerative orchard management, organic pest control, livestock integration and olive-oil production, giving the campaign a significant body of genuine knowledge to work with.
The objective
The campaign objective was online visibility.
Rather than focus exclusively on product coverage for olive oil, we wanted to broaden the number of places in which Frantoio Grove could credibly appear online.
Patrick’s horticultural and farming experience made that possible.
Gardening journalists regularly need knowledgeable sources to explain plant care, soil conditions, pollinators, seasonal maintenance and wider horticultural trends. By positioning Patrick around those subjects, Frantoio Grove could become relevant to a much larger editorial landscape than would have been possible through olive-oil product pitching alone.
The strategy
The campaign centred on expert-led PR.
We identified journalist opportunities where Patrick’s hands-on experience as a farmer and horticulture specialist could genuinely contribute to an article.
The focus was not on forcing Frantoio Grove into every response. Instead, the goal was to provide useful expert advice first and allow Patrick’s name, expertise and association with the farm to build the brand naturally.
That gave us a broad range of possible subjects, including:
seasonal gardening
plant and shrub selection
soil conditions
pollinator-friendly gardening
sustainable garden practices
winter garden care
planting and horticulture
regenerative agriculture
Patrick’s existing expertise made those subjects credible. His own writing for Frantoio Grove covers soil-health principles, regenerative orchard management, sheep grazing, pest control and the practical effects of climate and soil management on the farm.
Turning farming expertise into gardening media coverage
One of the key strategic decisions was to avoid treating Patrick solely as an olive-oil producer.
A farmer who manages a living orchard has practical experience with plants, soils, weather, pests, biodiversity and ecosystems. Those subjects overlap heavily with the editorial interests of consumer gardening publications.
That opened opportunities in major home and garden titles.
For Woman & Home, Patrick was used extensively as a horticulture expert in a feature about gardening habits that can inadvertently harm bees. He explained the effects of aggressive garden tidying, limited flowering periods, overly short lawns and poor watering practices on pollinator habitats. The publication introduced him as a horticulture specialist and farmer at Frantoio Grove.
This is a good example of the kind of visibility the campaign was designed to create. The feature was not about buying olive oil. It established Patrick Martin + Frantoio Grove + horticultural expertise in a national consumer publication.
Building a repeatable gardening profile
The campaign then built around a wider range of gardening subjects rather than relying on one successful angle.
House Beautiful featured Patrick in an article on the plants and characteristics associated with an English country garden.
Ideal Home used his expertise for features around fragrant gardens and shrubs that can create a more polished, hotel-style garden.
Homes & Gardens featured Frantoio Grove expertise on subjects including plants suited to silty soil, overwintering and dealing with heavy snow on plants.
Further coverage appeared around seasonal garden maintenance and autumn gardening advice through Country Living UK and Express.co.uk.
Fair PR’s own Media Coverage archive confirms the May 2026 run of Patrick-led coverage across Woman & Home, Ideal Home and House Beautiful.
Using seasonal relevance
Gardening is highly seasonal, which gave the campaign a continuous source of timely editorial opportunities.
Rather than trying to manufacture company news every week, we could respond to what readers were actually dealing with at different points of the year.
Examples included:
Autumn: common gardening jobs and when to stop fertilising.
Winter: helping gardens survive colder conditions, overwintering and removing heavy snow from plants.
Spring and early summer: pollinator-friendly gardening, fragrant planting, shrubs and country-garden planting.
This made Patrick useful to journalists throughout different editorial cycles while maintaining a coherent area of expertise.
Reaching high-authority home and garden media
The quality of the publication mix was particularly important.
The publicly usable campaign records include coverage across:
Homes & Gardens
Country Living UK
Express.co.uk
London Daily News
House Beautiful
Ideal Home
Woman & Home
Several of these publications repeatedly use recognised horticulture specialists and professional gardeners in their editorial content, so appearing as an expert source helped place Patrick within an established media ecosystem rather than simply generating isolated brand mentions.
The Published Press Board records, for example, show Homes & Gardens coverage around silty soil and winter plant care, alongside an Express gardening feature and seasonal London Daily News coverage.
Positioning Patrick as a genuine expert
The campaign worked because there was substance behind the positioning.
Patrick was not being presented as a generic lifestyle spokesperson.
His expertise comes from managing a working orchard and from Frantoio Grove's transition towards regenerative agriculture.
The farm's own resources show Patrick discussing subjects including:
soil microbiology, no-till farming, crop diversity, managed sheep grazing, irrigation, biological preparations, mineral balancing, organic pest management and climate resilience.
That depth gave us enough credibility to answer detailed journalist questions while still translating the advice into practical information for mainstream readers.
The results
Across the publicly usable campaign records, Frantoio Grove secured 10 published media placements across seven media brands.
The coverage was not concentrated around a single syndicated story.
Instead, Patrick appeared across multiple distinct editorial subjects and seasons, helping build a broader association between:
Patrick Martin → horticulture and farming expertise → Frantoio Grove.
The publication mix included specialist homes and gardens media, national lifestyle outlets and wider consumer news sites.
That is particularly relevant to the original objective of online visibility because it created multiple independent editorial references to Patrick and Frantoio Grove across established third-party domains.
The outcome
The three-month campaign demonstrated how a specialist business can use expertise outside the narrow confines of its core product category to create a much larger PR opportunity.
Frantoio Grove sells premium olive oil, but the knowledge behind the product spans farming, horticulture, soil, sustainability, biodiversity and plant care.
By identifying Patrick Martin as the strongest media asset and positioning him around those subjects, we were able to move Frantoio Grove into the home and gardening media conversation.
The result was 10 publicly shareable published media placements across seven media brands, including several of the best-known consumer gardening and homes titles.
For a campaign focused on online visibility, that gave Frantoio Grove something more valuable than a short burst of product promotion: a growing body of third-party evidence connecting the brand with genuine expertise.
| Result | Details |
|---|---|
| Campaign | Gardening and horticulture expert PR |
| Campaign length | 3 months |
| Expert(s) | Patrick Martin, Frantoio Grove |
| Primary objective | Increase Frantoio Grove's online visibility by positioning Patrick Martin as a credible media expert |
| PR approach | Reactive expert commentary and journalist-led gardening opportunities built around Patrick's farming, horticulture and regenerative agriculture expertise |
| Published media opportunities | 10 publicly shareable published placements across the supplied campaign records |
| Publication titles | 7 distinct media brands |
| Selected publications | Homes & Gardens, Country Living UK, House Beautiful, Ideal Home, Woman & Home, Express.co.uk and London Daily News |
| Campaign focus | Gardening, horticulture, seasonal plant care, pollinators, soil, sustainable gardening and regenerative agriculture |
Looking for PR support for a gardening, horticulture or specialist consumer business?
Fair Public Relations helps businesses turn genuine expertise into useful media opportunities. We combine proactive PR with reactive journalist opportunities to build credible earned visibility around the people and knowledge behind a brand.
Find out more about our Gardening PR service.
