Total Landscape Care Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/85697
business bests I The demands of combining landscape and nursery businesses t begins with a logical question: Why should I pay a wholesale distributor or plant broker for my landscape plants and trees when I could grow them myself? After all, most landscapers are good with plants, soil and maintenance, and already have a built-in customer base: their clients. How hard could it be? "Plenty hard," says Tony Avent, owner of Plant Delights Nursery in Raleigh, North Carolina, and author of So You Want to Start a Nursery, consid- ered the bible of nursery owner wannabes. "Just because you like to grow plants doesn't mean it's a good reason to start a nursery. It's like saying you like to cook, so you should start a restaurant." He's seen both sides of the equation – landscap- ers who add a nursery to supply their landscape business and nursery owners who fi gure they ought to get into the landscape business. "While landscaping is by far the most profi table, most folks who try both tend to either go bankrupt or end up in the nursery business," Avent says. SEEDS OF CHANGE Landscapers wanting to start a nursery usually start as landscapers who are unable to get the plants, quality or sizes they desire from nearby nurseries, he says. The nursery's fi rst function is to supply their landscaping business. Once the landscapers realize they can't predict demand any better than the nurseries they were buying from, they start wholesaling their surplus, and the rest, as they say, is a slippery slope. The nursery business, like the landscape busi- ness, ebbs and fl ows with the housing market, and its profi tability is dependent on the economic health of the area. However, there are exceptions. Successful owners wearing dual hats describe their experience as positive but not something they take on lightly. For some, their nursery business March 2012 / TOTAL LANDSCAPE CARE 33