Plant Strategies

Gardening Businesses Rooted in Fun and Optimism

by Janet O’Mara

Dig out those shovels and hoes; spring’s just around the corner and it’s time to get down and dirty in the garden.

For our area’s many nurseries, this means double duty — getting plant material ready for market and attracting eager gardeners to their stores. Spring is the most crucial time of the year, when most nurseries do 40-45 percent of their total retail sales in only a few weeks, and weather always plays a significant role.

“We always go into the spring season cautiously optimistic and hope everything works out all right.” admits Gary Lorenz, owner of Skagit Valley Gardens. Last spring was a good example. It was “not good; it was wet and crummy,” as described by Lorenz, and many nurseries never fully recovered the lost sales the rest of the year.

“Nursery owners are like farmers,” explains Cheryl Loeb, owner of Summersun Greenhouse and Nursery. “We’re at the mercy of the weather.”

In addition to the weather forecasts, another natural question this year is whether nursery sales will increase because of a change in customers’ priorities as a result of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Rebecca Moe, manager of D Avenue Nursery, Anacortes, says she is already seeing signs that they will. “Gardening is a comfort thing that people love to do,” she observes.

Lorenz agrees. “People will not be traveling as much and will be spending more time at home,” he says. “Instead of spending a couple thousand dollars or more on a trip, they’ll spend two or three hundred dollars on their yards and homes.”

Deymian Le Sar’s Karma Place Japanese Garden & Nursery in Bow specializes in bamboo, bonsai, indoor fountains and Japanese maples. “These are difficult times emotionally for people,” she says. “Having Oriental-style gardens with water features is soothing to the soul and very important now.” Le Sar says her business was even better last year than the year before. “I think maybe our customers are finding a larger need for serenity in their gardens — peace begins at home.”

 

No radical changes

Although D Avenue has ordered more ornamental trees because of last year’s demand and Summersun will add a 25th-anniversary celebration, area nurseries have not radically changed their inventories or marketing strategies to prepare for this year, mostly because they all have established niches that work for them.

“This year, the big marketing push for us is the Northwest Flower and Garden Show in Seattle (February 6-10),” reports John Christianson, owner of Christianson’s Nursery and Greenhouse on Best Road near La Conner. “In the past, it’s been a very, very successful opportunity for us to showcase our nursery.” The show attracts nearly 100,000 people and Christianson’s is one of about 30 display gardens for browsers to enjoy in the Washington State Convention Center.

“It’s a big deal for us, a terrific expense we justify because it’s an opportunity to attract customers from all across the Northwest — Oregon, Idaho, Washington and British Columbia,” he explains. “It’s that certain look of our gardens that inspires people to visit our nursery.”

This year’s design is a scene resembling an old English “allotment,” or urban cooperative, garden. “It looks real,” he describes. “The trees are old, the vegetable gardens have real veggies and there are lots of roses and perennials.” To further define the scene, his display garden also includes a boxwood hedge, an old wire fence and a glass greenhouse, constructed from 80-year-old glass panels purchased from Tillinghast Nursery and Seed Co. in La Conner.

 

Passion for planting

“Gardeners are passionate,” Christianson states, “and the Garden Show is nearly 100 percent gardeners. So it’s about the purest audience you can get. Because of that, we have found that a successful display garden will carry us two years, as a promotional event.”

An extra 20,000 copies of the nursery’s newsletter, which lists sales and classes, plus a complete rose inventory list is available at the show. “We have more than 700 varieties of roses, and if you’re a gardener into roses and you see that list,” he notes, “you will get real excited about visiting our nursery.”

Christianson also says his location, surrounded by bulb fields that attract tourists, helps keep sales vigorous as well, even during wet springs. “Our sales were consistently good last year, even when so many other nurseries struggled,” he reports.

“However, in this business,” he continues, “the difference between a good year and a bad year isn’t hugely significant. A very good year doesn’t necessarily assure that you’ll have a lot of money — it just means that you’re still around.

“The industry as a whole has never been flush,” he says, noting that there’s a bright side. “The lack of substantial bottom-line prosperity sort of weeds out the people who really shouldn’t be in it anyway.

“Frankly, if it were the kind of business where there was a lot of wealth, there would be a lot more people doing it, because it’s so much fun. It’s a delightful business to be in.”