Ranunculus

Photo courtesy of Hionis Greenhouses

WHY THEY’RE GREAT: It would be easy to chalk up Hionis Greenhouses’ greatness to size alone. Centrally located in New Jersey, the family-owned grower-retailer has 14 acres of greenhouse production with another 65 acres outdoors. Second-generation co-owner Tim Hionis traces the company’s focus on ornamental potted plants back to his parents’ start in 1985. “We’ve just evolved with the times and the trends to what we do today,” he says.

Highlights of the company’s year-round production include Easter lilies and spring-flowering bulbs, summer color in hanging baskets and container gardens, and fall mums and ornamental kale. Winter brings amaryllis and the full 14 greenhouse acres devoted to a poinsettia crop that comprised 250,000 plants — from 4 ½-inch to 18-inch pots — for 2018.

STAYING MARKET LEADERS: Extensive automation makes large-scale planting and other processes possible, but production isn’t the only thing the business has scaled successfully. Tim Hionis credits the company’s success to the strength of his family’s bond, growing quality product, staying on top of industry trends and maintaining the personal touch the company is known for. “We’re closely involved with all our customers, whether it’s a 25-store chain or a one-store mom and pop. We’re very hands-on,” he says.

An ability and willingness to change quickly keeps the company in sync with the marketplace. “Every three to four years, the way people purchase plant material changes. If you fall behind it’s tough to catch back up again,” Hionis explains. Years ago, production involved geraniums, New Guineas, hanging baskets and bedding plants. “Now [in] our spring range, we have over 200 items,” he says. The team focuses on bringing wholesale customers and end consumers the best in new varieties.

Easter lilies

Photo courtesy of Hionis Greenhouses

Embracing change extends to marketing. One part of the grower-retailer’s business targets small chains and grocery stores. Over the past several years, Hionis noticed these customers lumping ornamental potted plants into their produce categories. “We figured, ‘Let’s get out there.’ The best thing to do for marketing is get your name out there for name recognition,” he explains. So, in October 2018, the company exhibited at the Produce Marketing Association (PMA) Fresh Summit event in Orlando, Florida.

Hionis says that trade shows like PMA yield results and inspiration, as do event seminars, consumer and trade magazines, and the Hionis Greenhouses retail store. “It’s getting out there, being out there and not just wondering why one thing is working and the other thing is not working,” he explains. “Our main focus is that we strive for growing an exceptional product and having exceptional service. Our customers know we’ll be there when they need us.”

WHY THEY’RE GREAT: Pizzo Native Plant Nursery is dedicated to saving the environment. Propagating about 99 percent perennials, such as grasses and flowering forbs, and a select few native annuals, biennials and intermediate shrubs, the Leland, Illinois, nursery aims to use natives to bring ecological balance to U.S. and Canadian communities.

Kyle Banas, nursery manager and head grower, began in his role in 2009 after working in more traditional ornamental greenhouse settings. He joined the native nursery, established in 1999 by landscape architect and ecologist Jack Pizzo, after becoming passionate about propagating natives from seed to promote biological diversity and disease resilience.

Natives help communities of people lead healthy lives, Banas says. “They help with everything from improving the water we drink by filtering runoff, to the food we eat by feeding pollinators that help us grow crops, to the air we breathe by sequestering carbon and returning it to the ground,” Banas says.

GROWING SUSTAINABLY: Pizzo Native Plant Nursery has 8,000 square feet of heated greenhouse space, 21 hoophouses that make up 10 acres, aquatic beds, outdoor growing space and seed beds. The nursery follows its plants’ natural cycles, producing much of its plant material between May and September, when it adds seasonal help beyond its nine full-time employees. It overwinters plants in covered hoophouses for spring sales and starts shipping stock to landscape contractors in late March.

“Most of our plants start in a small, lean-to structure we have on our production building,” Banas says. “That serves as our germination chamber, so it’s got heated floors, an overhead mist system, automatic vents and a fan.”

The nursery then moves the seedling trays to a 5,000-square-foot gutter-connected greenhouse that has traveling irrigation booms and heat, Banas says. In the greenhouse, workers grow in propagation trays and transplant, then they take the plants to the hoophouses.

The nursery adheres to sustainable practices where it can, Banas says. These procedures include following an integrated pest management (IPM) program; mulching plants with rice hulls to control liverwort, algae and weeds while reducing irrigation; offering a rewards program for the return of plastic trays that the nursery then sanitizes and reuses; and reusing poly from houses as secondary floating row covers.

SERVING A NICHE: Pizzo Native Plant Nursery’s customers include landscape, general, roofing and ecological contractors; brokers; other growers; government entities such as the USDA Forest Service; and others, Banas says. The nursery grows for both landscaping and restoration projects, produces crops for green roofs and has established partnerships with nonprofits to create custom seed mixes for specific habitats.

Out of about 500 species that the nursery produces, it consistently grows about 300 species, most of which suit both landscaping and restoration projects. While the nursery grows several popular crops, such as ornamental grasses and the monarch butterfly host plant Asclepias, others can’t be found anywhere else.

Pizzo Native Plant Nursery follows specific processes for individual plant offerings, Banas says. “I think we’re up to, like, 27 different seed protocols for how we handle the seed once it’s collected,” he says. “We do a lot of our own seed collecting, and that’s a job that we do over the winter, is clean a lot of the seed. Then, we either stratify it or boil it or wait two years for it to germinate in the wild, or we throw it in bags and throw it in the wetland — or try to treat it with different bacteria.”

AN EXPANDING MARKET: In the 10 years that Banas has worked at Pizzo Native Plant Nursery, he has seen that natives have transitioned from a niche market to one that is relatively mainstream. “Younger people recognize the importance of natives because they are exposed to the issues of climate change and the overall health of the planet,” he says.

Pizzo Native Plant Nursery is dedicated to working with growers and others in the horticulture industry to introduce natives to a larger market, Banas says. As it expands to new markets, and addresses climate change and microclimates, it has grown new species that are native outside of the Chicago area.

The nursery is focused on finding partners to whom it can send trays, which Banas says is a more economical and sustainable method than shipping gallon containers across the country. “That’s more what we’re focused on, is how to be regional with this, because we are trying to expand and move into new markets [while] at the same time maintaining the integrity of native plants,” Banas says.

In the future, Pizzo Native Plant Nursery may open other locations, Banas says. If it does, it will need to find ways to handle logistics in a sustainable way. This, he adds, is a key element of introducing natives to populations that are a farther distance.

“Natives are an integral part of our ecosystem, and it’s gone unrecognized for too long,” Banas says. “Here at the nursery, we’re just happy to be part of restoring that balance, so that’s at the front of our company culture — that’s what we›re going for. I think that’s what really sets us apart from other nurseries."

WHY HE’S GREAT: Chris Hansen loves horticulture, enthusiastically marketing his unique plant varieties to a younger audience seeking a carefree perennial that won’t wilt under their attention. Hansen spun his lifelong adoration for the greenhouse into Garden Solutions, where he manages 17 employees in the production and shipping of 72-cell plugs of SunSparkler sedums and Chick Charms sempervivums.

“There are so many opportunities in the industry, but the main thing is to get non-gardeners excited,” Hansen says. “If you can reach people when they’re young and get them enthused about plants, then you’ve got them hooked for life.”

FEEDING OFF THE ENERGY: As an independent breeder, Hansen is always busy developing distinctive brands. A newer creation is Gnome Domes, part of the Orostachys family of succulents closely related to sedums and sempervivums. Resembling the common Hens and Chicks evergreen succulent, Gnome Domes add a mix of reds, greens, oranges and silvery blues to rock gardens. The plant gets its name from a tall cone emanating from its center that contains hundreds of tiny flowers.

Hansen’s Chick Charms brand of sempervivum launched four years ago with a dozen varieties, with new selections introduced every year since. The colorful, vigorous plants are led by the striking “Gold Nugget,” which sold to the tune of 120,000 plugs in 2018. Drought proof and hardy, Chick Charms are often bought together for display by avid collectors.

“People love collecting them because they’re so easy to grow,” Hansen says. “You can have them out on a cold windowsill in winter.”

Instilling a love for gardening in children is buoyed by fostering an environment of fun at work, Hansen believes. Garden Solutions employs workers of all ages, some of whom had little interest in plants before getting hired. While the hardworking breeder’s culture of creativity includes keeping a trio of miniature donkeys on site to inspire employees, the real magic comes when Hansen’s crew taps into one another’s energy.

“People feed off passion — if they see me enthused they’re going to get excited,” Hansen says.

Douglas is a Cleveland Heights, Ohio-based freelance writer and journalist. His work has been published by Midwest Energy News, Crain’s Cleveland Business and The Chronicle of Higher Education.