The Blogging Nurseryman by Trey Pitsenberger

In case you think garden aesthetics would never be a political issue look no further than Placerville (known in the old days as “Old Hangtown”). This is the county seat of El Dorado County and our nearest large town. According to The Sacramento Bee the city council has decided to have In ‘n Out Burger remove the two palms that we talked about earlier. If you remember the two palms took the project over the requirement that 50% of the landscape be El Dorado County natives.

The palms have become one of the main campaign issue in the upcoming city council elections. The local paper The Mountain Democrat recently posted an editorial on the issue. They, like my self think it’s silly to have to remove the palms now that they have been planted.

What’s most important here is the city government is trying to come up with a foothill aesthetic. The editorial says, “Instead of suggesting the business add some native plants such as blue flowering ceonothus shrubs or redbud trees to bring the native plant ratio into compliance, the city Planning Commission ventured into that elusive regime of what’s proper and what’s not proper aesthetics. The majority pooh-poohed palms trees as some Southern California alien life force. Unfortunately, these commissioners are not familiar with their own town. There are quite a few palm trees around town and they are old enough that they probably predate paving and cement sidewalks on Main Street. There is no ‘mountain town’ aesthetic that we should be forced to live with, otherwise every new commercial building would be required to be built of sheet metal or brick or stone.”

In Placerville the city council wants to promote a foothill aesthetic in its commercial landscapes. So what’s the foothill aesthetic? Our region lives off vacationers who visit the area for its natural beauty as well as the gold rush history. We are just 5 miles from Sutter’s Mill and Marshall Gold Discovery Park. One of the first things the new settlers did was plant non-native species they remembered from home. The giant black locusts that line the streets of Coloma are non-native, as well as Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima) which has spread all over. Soon as the settlers realized they would grow here they planted Palms. If you drive through Newcastle or Loomis you will see rows of palms well over 100 years old that line some of the streets.

It would seem that the City Council wants to come up with an aesthetic that was the foothills before the settlers arrived. How reasonable is that considering the history of the last 150 years here is about man changing the environment? You cannot go anywhere in the foothills and not see the results of gold mining on the land. Osage orange, old fashioned lilacs, rambling roses, and palms are growing in Marshall Gold Discovery Park. There are two 100 year old palms planted in front of one of the historic homes right in town.

This argument may show up at a town near you soon. What are the towns aesthetic and who decides. Should we turn our backs on 150 years of gardening history to try and create some type of aesthetic that existed before the settlers came?

So it’s about more than a couple of palms. It’s about elected officials deciding what is “proper” landscaping for the rest of us. Since this is one of the main issues for this election well see who get elected. Pro-palm or anti-palm, its your vote.

Today’s Garden Center points us to recent study by Horticulture Week, a British on line web resource. Now this is a British study and I am not sure if it relates to Garden Centers in The United States, but I bet it will. “According to a recent conference of the Horticultural Trade Association (HTA) in the U.K. Qualitative research by Illuma Research and the HTA showed cafés are becoming meeting places in garden centres, according to the magazine. Sixty-five person (sic)of visitors told Illuma and HTA it was important to have a café. An interesting note, too, is that “mums with toddlers” and “empty-nesters” were the most frequent visitors to the cafés.”

We are always being invited to go on tours of Europe and especially Britain where we are told that the future of garden center retailing is being mapped out. While we have never found the time to take one of those European tours I read about what nursery people see there. It would seem that bigger stores, complete with cafes are what is hip. I actually find these reports depressing as a smaller garden center owner. 65% of visitors say it’s important to have a café! We are are thinking about a coffee kiosk but the idea of building a café is just not in the cards, yet.

I think the most important thing to glean from a study like this is just how picky people are becoming. I can’t even imagine that a café would have been necessary 10 years ago. Now if you want the business and don’t have a café you might be out of luck. You can’t argue with peoples wants. They are what they are and we have to adjust or see our business slowly go away.

While the idea of building a café can be daunting for a small garden center, I do find hope in this report. It seems people want to hang out at garden centers that cater to their needs. Maybe we can’t build a café, but we can offer a cup of excellent coffee and great places to sit and enjoy it. A small coffee kiosk that dispenses coffee, cappuccino, and other drinks might do the trick. Winter time is a problem as we don’t have the room to set aside for a café. But during the dry season wondering through the nursery with a cup of good coffee is something our customers say would be nice. So next year we will do that.

Sometimes these reports seem to say, “Hey if you don’t have the money to put in a café, bone bar for the pets, and giant indoor greenhouse shopping area, you’re doomed.” These studies seem to be aimed at the large garden centers who can implement these ideas. We smaller centers have to read these reports and come up with creative ways to provide the same experience, yet with a limited budget.

Green Beam News points us to Safe Lawns Org. (warning, has irritating music when you open the web page. I hate this and generally leave a site before I figure out how to turn it off.) “an international coalition of for-profit and nonprofit organizations plans to promote organic lawn care and resource conservation throughout 2007.”The main participant in this program is Bradfield Organics, a division of Purina Mills. According to Bradfield’s web page “Made from alfalfa and other natural ingredients including humates, molasses, sulfate of potash and poultry proteins, Bradfield Organics fertilizers are clean, convenient and easy to use. The new line is designed for long-lasting results in pastures, yards and gardens.” What is poultry protein? Is it what I think it is?

According to Safe Lawns Org. “the effort is being led by HGTV host and People Places & Plants editor Paul Tukey. The campaign will be touted by more than 100 garden writers and industry professionals.”

We like this program as it shows a way to have a lawn yet reduce the amount of synthetic products used. I use E.B. Stone “Natures Green Lawn Food” and have been impressed with how much better organics work to keep the lawn green while reducing the frequency of applications. “Natures Green” was one of the first natural lawn food’s offered and it’s good to see more brands coming out.

Parade magazine has published “5 Easy (and Cheap) Ways To Remodel”. Besides “Create a Beautiful Backsplash”, “Go for Glass”, “Liven Up the Lighting”, and “Customize the Closets” we have “Make Over the Outdoors”.

To quote the article, “Outdoor ‘rooms’ are one of the most cost-effective ways of increasing your living space. If you already have a deck or patio, consider turning part of it into an open-air kitchen, a feature especially in demand among today’s buyers.”

Here is an idea I had never thought off, “In areas where a home’s square footage is used to assess property taxes, such backyard “additions” won’t increase your taxes.” I am sure that’s why lots of people have not “made over” their “outdoor rooms”, fear of higher taxes.

The best part of the remodel, “Ease Factor: With a little help, skilled homeowners can assemble their kitchen in a few weekends.” Finally, “Cost: From a few hundred bucks, for a counter area next to the grill.”

I thought the phrase “skilled homeowner” was intersesting. Skilled in what, owning a home? I believe what they mean is homeowners skilled in carpentry and plumbing, which I think most folks are not. So there you have it. Make over your outdoor room and keep your taxes down. Who would have thought!

Wanting to touch on why my former garden center was closing down I realized that there are numerous reasons. There are too many for one post so lets look at it over a series of posts. I think there are lessons here for anyone contemplating opening or buying a garden center, so I will post these at my “The Art of Running a Garden Center” site also.

While the main reason the store is closing is due to current events and ownership, the seeds of destruction we’re planted by the former owners, my ex-partners. It started when we began our partnership! This now goes back about 11 years.

When we were invited to buy into ownership of the business we thought it would be vital to have a partnership agreement. I was worried about what would happen if we had a falling out later. Our soon to be partners didn’t want to bother with one. We were excited about being owners of a happening place and jumped in with nothing more than a handshake. Thus the seed’s of the eventual downfall of the garden center were planted at a time of great optimism and profitability. Who would have known?

There may come a time when you have an opportunity to partner up with someone in a business venture. If you really feel this is the only way to proceed then you MUST have a partnership agreement. A partnership agreement spells out who is in charge of what, and if the partnership doesn’t work, the agreement spells out how to dissolve the partnership in a somewhat graceful way. My advice, the only partnership you ever want to enter into is with your life mate. Stay away from business partnerships.

My former partner’s had quite the egos and felt they were the controlling partners in the business. I don’t remember us discussing that but they started telling us what to do. Without an agreement the partnership is considered a general partnership with 50/50 ownership. There is no controlling partner. While business was growing at a rapid pace the problems we’re few , but soon as the growth wasn’t fast enough for our partners the disagreements on how to run the business got worse and worse.

So what do you do? We just wanted to get out of what had turned a fun job into a nightmare. Because our partners weren’t about to sell to us, and they refused to buy our half, we we’re in a quandry. <p this=”" class=”We’ll to make a long story short there is a way to end a partnership where one partner want’s to sell and the other doesn’t. You have to hire an attorney and start a dissolution of partnership. The court will move in, sell off the assets, pay the bills and anything left is split between the partners. My partners couldn’t believe we could do this as they never got it in their heads that we were equal partners. All this trouble because of their insistence that a partnership agreement was not needed, and my inability to demand one.

Instead of us owning the Auburn store and continuing the business while our partners could run the other store, they ended up buying us out. Now they had to run both stores! The people who really cared about the business are gone and the people who wanted out are stuck running it.

The real problem for our now ex-partners is that they had no one to help run the Auburn store. Through some very poor employee relations they had chased most of the workers away, but that’s for our another discussion.

We went over to see the old store just last week. Plants we’re untended and dying and we found out they were moving everything up to the Grass Valley store and basically abandoning the site. The picture of the sign shows a weeping Japanese maple that we planted years ago, brown and dead! The landlord now has to rent the land, and I doubt a nursery is in the plans.

While the loss of the nursery for the community is sad, the ultimate results are we now have a great garden center and are as happy as we have ever been! So we will chaulk it up to a hard lesson learned.

This story from Los Angeles mirrors the post on Sacramento’s Tree Program we talked about. According to Green Beam News “L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa wants Los Angeles residents, businesses and city departments to plant 1 million trees during the next several years. The city distributed free seedlings and 5-gallon trees Sept. 30. The city partnered with nonprofit organizations such as TreePeople and L.A. Conservation Corps to continue giving away trees. The initiative is encouraging people to plant 5-gallon or larger trees. The city is asking residents and businesses to plant trees that provide shade, require little water and establish relatively easily, said George Gonzalez, Urban Forestry Division chief forester.” While I am all for trees being planted I have a couple of questions about this and other programs like this. According to the article “The Trees for Green LA program designers have developed a comprehensive List of Available Residential Trees with input from several urban forestry experts, including landscape architects and local arborists. The experts have ensured that a variety of low- and moderate-water-use species, appropriate for the different areas in Los Angeles, are offered, although available species may vary from season to season. Approximately 30 species are expected to be available at any given time.”

The article continues, “Because the purpose of this program is to provide residents with ornamental shade trees, palm trees (which offer only minimal shade) are not supplied. For the same reason, trees that produce edible fruit also are not available.”

This is the list of trees, and what is most interesting that there are only three native trees on the list, Quercus agrifolia (Coast Live Oak), and Platanus racemosus (California sycamore), and Alnus rhombifolia (White Alder).

The Chinese Tallow tree (Sapium sebiferum) which is a recommended tree is also, according to Global invasive species initative an invasive pest. According to Invasivespecies.org Albizia julibrissin (Mimosa) is also a pest.

My county, El Dorado requires 50% of a commercial landscape be natives to this county. I know most municipalities discourage invasive species. It just seems odd that L.A. would encourage planting of non-natives and invasive species when other municipalities are requiring natives and discouraging invasive species. What good does it do for El Dorado County to have these requirements when our largest city does not?

My kids would roll their eyes when dad would spot a historical marker on the side of the road since I am one of those people who stop and read them. When I was visiting my daughter and granddaughter in Riverside I read about the original navel orange tree, still growing in the middle of a busy road. This is the tree that all navel oranges descended from. My two favorite subjects, history and horticulture. That’s Teddy Roosevelt transplanting the other original navel orange. It later died. The trees were brought up from Brazil and planted in what was then the very beginning of the orange boom that built southern California.

It’s apple harvest time on Apple Hill. Located about 15 miles from here it is made up of all sorts of small apple farms that sell all the goodies, pies, cider, arts & crafts, etc. It was originally made up of pears which all died do to disease in the 1950’s and 60’s. They came up with the idea of planting apples and selling direct to the consumer.

One of the original homesteads is the
Larsen Apple Farm, started in the 1860’s. We went up last week to eat pie and drink cider. I love checking out the old Rhode Island Greening apple located just across from the big apple barn. Planted in 1860 the tree still produces! How amazing that it was planted when Lincoln was president.

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I wanted to discuss the reasons why my old nursery “The Happy Frog” was up for sale. When we left it “The Happy Frog” was a happening place. Within four years it’s down and out and for sale.

While I still want to discuss this another thought entered my mind. What if the present owners had a place they could go to get information on running a small garden center? I doubt this would have been the saving grace, for reasons we will discuss. Never-the-less there is no one place a person can go to find out about “The Art of Running a Small Garden Center”.

Tony Avent wrote a book called “So You Want to Start a Nursery” a few years ago. While it is a good read, it discusses mail order nurseries, growing nurseries, and other types of nursery business. Tony is in mail order and only opens the nursery to the public on special days. I want to focus on small and medium sized garden centers that depend on the walk-in customer, with a focus on marketing and customer service. To that end I built a lens here. I have also included a link on my sidebar. This will be a place that anyone interested in small garden centers can go to find and add information.

That’s where you can help. I have already started to populate “The Art of Running a Small Garden Center” with links to posts where we have talked about garden centers in the past. Genie’s the “Plant Traffiker” is one such link. The discussion we had about Lyndale’s Garden Center is another

Can you send me links to any nurseries or garden centers that you frequent or find interesting? Send me links to garden centers that don’t do it right. In other words any thing that you think would interest a potential or current owner of a small garden center. As I receive this info I will transfer it to “The Art of Running a Small Garden Center” lens. Don’t worry about doing this all at once. Just keep your eye’s open and if you see something of interest send it my way.

I choose small garden centers as my focus because that where I have my expertise. In the trade we are always hearing about second and third generation owners and their ideas, yet they all seem to have large multi-million dollar operations. What about garden centers whose sales are less than 3 million dollars a year? In case that sounds like a lot we will in the future look at where the money goes, and boy does it go.

My motivation is to help others, who are interested in opening and/or running a small garden center. It is also to keep me sharp and current. By discussing these things and putting them in one place it keeps me excited about my profession, which at times can be quite trying. I will keep this blog going as it, and the interaction of my readers is what got this idea going in the first place.

My profession is notoriously slow to respond to new ideas and trends. “The Art of Running a Small Garden Center” and this blog are my way of pushing my-self, and anyone else in the trade who wants to go along into the 21^st century.

I found this on the internet. This is our old garden center “The Happy Frog” in Auburn. We sold out to our partners about five years ago to build our present center “The Golden Gecko”. About a year later they sold out to a fellow from The Bay Area.

We had been hearing from our customers who had frequented The Happy Frog that it was having a tough go and looked like it might be up for sale. This was interesting as when we left it, “The Happy Frog” was one of northern California’s most innovative garden centers and was a growing concern.

What happened and what could have been done to save it? This will be the subject of my upcoming post.

Oh, if you are interested you can pick this business and property up for between 2.5 and 5 million!

Garden Center Magazine published by Branch Smith Publishing bills itself as a place for “Smart Ideas for Independent Retailers.” We receive the magazine as well as most professionals in the nursery business and related fields. Generally I have found it to be one of the better of the many trade magazines we receive.

The latest issue has arrived and they are talking about blogging! They have a regular section titled “Market Smart: In Depth” This months article is entitled “Retail blogs tap into younger demographic.” Author Sarah Martinez say’s “Blogs, also known as Web logs or journals, are the latest medium vying for attention in an already crowded market. Chances are a good portion of your customer base is at least familiar with bolgs and are probably blogging themselves.”

To the credit of Sarah and Garden Center Magazine I believe this is the first article dealing with blogs for the garden center industry. The article is positive in tone and interviews Anita Campbell, editor of the blog Small Business Trends, and your’s truly. This is the interview that we talked about way back in June. That’s where we found out that most nursery consultants feel that blogs have no relevance for garden centers. I posted about that here.

If you would like to read the interview it is in the June link above. This is great news for the idea of garden center blogs. This is a publication that gets lots of attention in the garden center trade. We’ll see what comes of it.

I hope that if you do decide to use a blog at your garden center you’ll follow this advice from the article. ‘“…garden centers should only start a blog if someone on staff will enjoy doing it’, Pitsenberger said. ‘If it’s considered a chore, it won’t get updated and it won’t generate feedback from customers.’” You want feedback! I get feedback from all over the world form my “customers”. They may not actually shop at my physical location, but they shop at garden centers all over and are more than willing to dispense their thoughts and ideas about my business. The suggestions and ideas I have heard don’t always get implemented, but some do, and that’s important. It also broadens our outlook to see how people in other parts of the country and world are relating to gardening, garden centers, competition from box stores, etc.

So hats off to Garden Center Magazine for broaching the subject and realizing that the nursery consultants are wrong and blogging for garden centers is, as the column in the magazine is titled, “Market Smart”.