Making a Living Growing Plants
By August, the gardening frenzy is waning for many of South Carolina’s homeowners. In the spring and early weeks of summer, they added annuals such as impatiens, begonias and geraniums to flower gardens and a few shrubs and perennials like gardenia and loropetalum for long-lasting foundational functionality. Those who are die-hard gardeners may keep planting shrubs and trees throughout the cooler months and enliven gardens with the happy faces of pansies and mums during the mild Southern winter months. Increasingly this year, South Carolinians purchased vegetable plants to transplant in their backyard gardens, unhappy with rising food prices and desiring to control pesticide use on their consumables.
It’s amazing that South Carolina’s floriculture/greenhouse/nursery business is listed as the second-largest agricultural industry in the state because it is literally run by the sweat of family members’ brows. The $234 million industry is comprised of growers in all parts of the state, almost exclusively family-owned businesses. Although their number has decreased somewhat over the last two turbulent years, they are maintaining operations in these leaner times, knowing business is a cycle that will turn once again in their favor. South Carolina growers know business cycles intimately, as most of them have been in business 15 years or more and have seen the ups and downs of the economy.
STATE OF THE INDUSTRY
“The industry is flat at the moment,” says Jim Faust, interim department chair and associate professor in the Department of Horticulture at Clemson University. He specializes in floriculture and travels the state educating growers about emerging industry research, conducting research projects, and solving production problems in the greenhouses and fields of the state. “It’s a maturing industry. We saw exponential growth in the 1970s through 1990s, but in the last couple of years, some businesses have gone away. Carolina Nurseries, a large grower in Moncks Corner, succumbed to bankruptcy last year.
“The banking crisis affected Carolina Nurseries. Banks weren’t lending, and that presented an insurmountable financial challenge for the company,” Faust says.
“Cash flow is a problem in this business,” concurs Richard Chandler, owner of Helping Hands Nursery in Irmo. “We try to make enough in the high season to get us through the off-season.”
In addition to financing, the industry faces other challenges, including weather, a seasonal business nature, the housing bust, and general recessionary woes that afflict every industry.
“The nursery industry [those who grow trees and shrubs] has been hit hard by the poor housing market,” Faust continues. “The greenhouse end [annual and perennial flower growers] has been buffered because its main customers are individual gardeners. But overall, there are lots of price pressures and competition, with the usual consolidation among the larger growers.
“There is clearly a growing business with new customers who are purchasing vegetable plants,” Faust continues. He grows several varieties of tomatoes and peppers in Clemson University’s test gardens to evaluate their appropriateness for South Carolina’s climate.
“The trend now is vegetable gardens,” says Rebekah Cline, co-owner of Rebekah’s Garden, Inc., a grower and retailer on Leesburg Road in the southeastern part of Columbia. “Homesteading is hot; people are interested in spending less on groceries and eating better quality foods.”
One of her biggest problems is redirecting customers to her new location after exiting the SC State Farmer’s Market during its move. “We rely on word-of-mouth since there is not much money for advertising,” she says. “We had to put in new greenhouses and get the property ready at the new location, which was expensive.” She and her co-owner and husband, Bill Cline, sell flowers, shrubs, trees, and other plants directly to consumers grown in the 10 greenhouses and another 12 acres planted around her home and storefront.
Growers are dependent upon weather, an unreliable friend at best. “It’s important for good weather in March, April, and May for growers to have a successful season,” Faust says. “Profitability and weather patterns track together each year.”
For Judy Wicker, owner of Wicker’s Greenhouse Nursery in Newberry, last winter’s prolonged cold meant she had to come up with extra money to pay more expensive greenhouse heating bills. “We have had no relief this summer either. Electricity runs our water pumps, and a lack of rain equals consistently high electricity bills year-round,” Wicker says. Like the rest of the industry, the spring season is busiest for her, and hot July is when sales typically slow. Landscaping projects help fill the gaps for her 31-year-old family business.
Willis Bruce of Bruce’s Greenhouses in Blythewood says the fizzling construction industry has not affected his business but has affected the industry as a whole. “Our sales of poinsettias are to churches and other organizations, not landscapers,” Bruce says. What has really hit him hard is increasing energy prices, which affect everything from higher freight costs to more expensive pots, which are made from petroleum. “We are not able to successfully pass these costs along as easily as other industries, so our profit margins are shrinking.” To offset the increases, Bruce says he must grow products smarter, bring formerly subcontracted labor in-house, and rely more on family and part-time employee labor. “I don’t want to be negative, though,” he comments. “The hard times are good because they force us to innovate – something we probably wouldn’t normally do.”
Floriculture [flowering plant] producers in the state sold a wholesale value of $93,000 in 2010, down seven percent from 2009, according to annual statistics collected and provided by the US Department of Agriculture. The SC Department of Agriculture reports that along with floriculture, ornamental horticulture, nursery and turf grass growers earned $300 million last year. “The industry was at its peak 10 years ago,” says Wicker. “The last two years it has been off a little but not as much as other retailers [in other industries],” she says. All other local growers agree with her, as they have been affected in the last two to three years but say they are still working with a viable business model. “It was great before the last couple of years, and we didn’t appreciate it at the time,” says Bruce.
FOR THE LOVE OF GREEN
For all the seven-day-a-week months in a grower’s work schedule, there is an upside to the grueling labor of the job. “Those who work in the industry love growing plants and being outdoors,” Faust says. Every Midlands grower interviewed for this article agreed with Faust when asked what is best about their chosen career. “Growing is the fun of making nothing into something of value,” says Chandler of Helping Hands Nursery, who grows 80 percent of the products he sells at his Irmo storefront.
“I love the people that the flower business draws. They are kind, nurturing and love flowers and animals,” says Cline of Rebekah’s Garden.
“You don’t do it if you don’t love it,” says Wicker of Wicker’s Greenhouse Nursery. “When it snows and the greenhouse collapses, you must be there. In the winter, you still must water plants. Sometimes you can’t get away on the weekend.”
HOT PRODUCTS
There are some annuals and perennials that have turned gardeners’ heads this year and last year, helping growers add a little profit where there may have been none.
Retailer Rick Woodley of Woodley’s Garden Center in Columbia says 75 percent of the plants he sells in his two stores come from South Carolina growers. Here is his and Faust’s lists of hot, new sellers this year:
• Drift Rose, a groundcover shrub that blooms six to seven months of the year
• Loropetalum – two new varieties, Purple Diamond and Purple Pixie, display interesting dark purple foliage and flowers
• New Abelia shrub varieties – Limelight and Kaleidoscope
• Black Petunias (solid black or black with yellow stripes)
• Sunpatiens (impatiens for the sun)
• Dragon Wing Begonias (flower in sun or shade).
THE FUTURE OF FLORAL
Those who work daily in the industry point to consumer buying changes over the last few years. Growers answer the call by modifying their offerings. “Everyone is renovating their backyards now, getting ready to enjoy them rather than traveling away on vacation. They are looking for low-maintenance, compact shrubs as replacements to aging shrubbery,” says Wicker.
“We have to change with consumers and stay on the cutting edge, such as focusing on having plants available that work with less water,” says Woodley. Like the growers, Woodley says there has been a retail sales drop in the recent past but says this year’s revenue is up six percent, although not back to 2007 numbers. Many companies have added landscape design consultations to fill out their bank accounts. Like any good entrepreneur, growers who have made it through the recent economic downturn are inventive, savvy and flexible.
The bottom line is growers are used to looking toward the future. It’s the nature of their businesses. While we are sweltering in the last hurrah of summer, growers are well underway growing poinsettias, mums and pansies for next season and annual flowers for next year.