One of the most common insect pests faced in the nursery and landscape, Japanese beetles are also one of the most problematic to control for many reasons.

“Japanese beetles are very difficult to manage because they just keep coming,” says Dr. Daniel Potter, professor of entomology at the University of Kentucky. “They can fly long distances and are attracted to plants that other beetles have already fed on. You can control them one day, but there are going to be more flying in an hour later.”

Active in most areas of the country from late May through August, Japanese beetles are not picky when it comes to food sources and are known to feed on more than 300 types of plants, trees and shrubs. The beetles will also feed on flowers and fruits.

“If you look at the standard chemistries we’re currently using as sprays for control of Japanese beetles, none provide residual control for more than about 14 days,” says Dr. Carl Redmond, research scientist at the University of Kentucky. “You’re talking about having to reapply materials over their entire flight period, which lasts about two months.”

Among foliage-feeding insects, Potter finds Japanese beetles to be the most important, requiring residual protection because of their insatiable feeding and lengthy flight period.

Acelepryn® insecticide from Syngenta provides as much as four weeks of residual protection from Japanese beetles as a foliar spray.

“We’ve done several Japanese beetle trials looking at dosages and different ages of residue in the field. Acelepryn has performed as well or better than any standard out there on the market,” says Redmond. “It is superior in residue length. We’ve gotten control of up to four weeks for Japanese beetles from a single application, which is a major advantage.”

Targeted control

Acelepryn is also labeled for control of caterpillars, including eastern tent caterpillars, fall webworm and bagworms, and sawfly larvae. It offers a unique mode of action to help mitigate resistance concerns.

Neonicotinoids and pyrethroids have long been used to combat insect pests on trees and shrubs, but concerns about their potential hazard to bees have resulted in label restrictions on those types of products.

“The active ingredient of Acelepryn is chlorantraniliprole in IRAC group 28,” says Nancy Rechcigl, technical services manager for ornamentals at Syngenta. “It is a unique class of chemistry that offers an alternative for those looking for newer chemistries to add to their programs.”

Acelepryn has no signal word on the label and is registered as reduced-risk by the U.S. EPA under its Reduced Risk Program. Its active ingredient is target-selective, providing control of leaf-chewing insect pests without affecting beneficial insects such as bees and biological control agents.

“Acelepryn is unique in that foliar sprays will provide extended protection from a broad range of leaf-chewing pests with very low hazard to bees,” says Potter. “In our experiments, we have evaluated Acelepryn in real-use outdoor scenarios and have seen no impact on bees. The product is also quite compatible with biological control.”

In addition to its favorable environmental profile, Acelepryn offers a four-hour REI and requires minimal personal protective equipment. Its long residual activity also leads to fewer applications, saving time and resources for applicators.

Product flexibility

Acelepryn can be used in commercial and residential landscapes. It can be applied to ornamental plants, trees, shrubs, bulbs and Christmas trees.

The product can be sprayed directly on leaves to control chewing insect pests, or as a bark application to ward off pests like clearwing borers.

When applied as a foliar spray, the leaves of plants are protected from Japanese beetles and lepidopteran pests. Acelepryn does not show strong contact activity, but once the treated leaves are ingested by pests, mortality will occur.

“Acelepryn should be applied before infestations reach damaging levels, especially on larger plants,” says Rechcigl. “Curative applications are often not successful with pests like Japanese beetles because they can very quickly cause damage and spread.”

A unique innovation

Acelepryn provides a unique tool for combatting Japanese beetles, caterpillars, and sawfly larvae on trees and shrubs. It has a novel active ingredient that provides excellent pest control while also demonstrating very low hazard to both humans and beneficial insects.

“The combination of strong efficacy, long residual as a foliar spray and very low hazard to non-target organisms is a unique combination,” says Potter. “Acelepryn controls a lot of important chewing pests, gives you the flexibility of not having to apply it over and over again, and provides a very favorable environmental and hazard safety profile.”

Federal registration of Acelepryn for use in nurseries and greenhouses is expected in summer 2018.

Learn more by visiting www.GreenCastOnline.com/Acelepryn

1A reduced-risk pesticide use is defined as one which may reasonably be expected to accomplish one or more of the following: (1) reduces pesticide risks to human health; (2) reduces pesticide risks to non-target organisms; (3) reduces the potential for contamination of valued, environmental resources, or (4) broadens adoption of IPM or makes it more effective. Acelepryn qualifies under one or more of the above criteria. All photos are either the property of Syngenta or are used with permission. © 2018 Syngenta. Important: Always read and follow label instructions. Some products may not be registered for sale or use in all states or counties and/ or may have state-specific use requirements. Please check with your local extension service to ensure registration and proper use. Acelepryn^®, GreenCast^® and the Syngenta logo are trademarks of a Syngenta Group Company. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Photo: Ron Scheffler

As the oldest of three siblings, and part of the third generation at Jeffery’s Greenhouses, it seemed inevitable that Barbara Jeffery-Gibson would find her way back to the family business. However, Barb’s passions took her in a different direction, and she headed to Toronto after high school to study fashion merchandising at the Ryerson School of Fashion. But her path wasn’t set in stone quite yet, and she would eventually return to Jeffery’s. “I was the least likely to be involved, and now I’m the most involved,” Barb says.

Farming, then flowers

In 1933, George and Anne Jeffery, Barb’s grandparents, purchased a farm in St. Catharines that was the family’s first foray into horticulture. “It was more like a fruit and vegetable farm,” Barb says. When Barb’s father, Jim Jeffery, was a teenager, he suggested adding greenhouses and flower production to the business. By the time he was 16, Jim was 50 percent owner of the business, and the company’s name was changed to George Jeffery & Son Greenhouses in 1965. A few years later, Jim married Sandy, Barb’s mother. “They really built the business together,” Barb says. “So much so that my grandfather gifted his shares to my mother [in 1982] so that my parents were [each] 50 percent owners in the business.” At this point, the name was changed to Jeffery’s Greenhouses, Inc.

Barb and her two younger siblings, Kim and Jim Jr. or Jimmy, grew up in the greenhouse, and were an integral part of the family business. “When you grow up in a family farm or greenhouse business, there are seasonal times of year that you’re so busy and everybody has got to pitch in, including your kids,” Barb’s father Jim says. Barb remembers working in the greenhouse any time they were off school. “We were brought up in the greenhouse, helping out where we could,” Barb says. “I had probably done most of the jobs in the greenhouse, and I’ll joke that I probably wasn’t the quickest on all of the jobs, maybe not loving it as much as somebody else might have.”

Jim picked up on that, too. “Barb was the one that least liked getting her hands dirty. She was willing to do some of the jobs, but she wasn’t too keen on that,” he says.

Fashion or flowers?

After high school, Barb dove into her fashion merchandising studies at Ryerson. Sandy says she could see a difference in Barb as she progressed through her studies. “She really learned discipline and leadership [there],” Sandy says. “She’d be up until all hours of the night getting a fashion show ready for the next day. Just the discipline you had to have to do that, she must have absolutely loved it because she worked so hard at it and it paid off for her.”

Barb continued to come home on her breaks and work for the family business, and the timing proved serendipitous. “It wasn’t until [I went away to university] that I finished school within a time frame that I was able to work in the greenhouse and actually see the busy rush of our business, so that sparked my interest — that never happened before,” she says. “I came home [in the] middle of April and tried working in the office instead of in the greenhouse.” By the second year of doing this, Barb says she was essentially running the sales office during that time. “I found a passion for wanting to put my stamp on things, set some goals and change the way the business was,” she says. “I found confidence in what I was doing and I was very driven to, coming out of school, have my own space to carve out my own path.”

At this point, Barb was sure that working at Jeffery’s was in her future. “I decided to finish the third and fourth year [of university] and then come back,” Barb says. “I wanted to have that accomplishment, and I really did like the course I was in.”

Not everyone expected Barb to come back into the business. Her parents had always encouraged their children to “go do something different,” as Barb puts it. “We thought she would stay in Toronto [when] she was offered jobs just out of school,” Sandy says. “She turned them down. We thought for sure she’d be somewhere like New York or Chicago or Toronto — one of the big metropolitan cities. She chose home, and we’re very happy for her, and I know she loves doing what she’s doing here.”

“It really was a surprise to me as well, because it wasn’t really where I thought I would be,” Barb says. Now, 25 years later, she knows that her path took her right back to where she needed to be.

25 years of relationships

Currently, Barb oversees sales, administration and growing as president/co-owner of the company. She works with her husband Rodd, who is the general manager and works at their other greenhouse location. “Rodd has been a very integral part of our business,” she says. Jim says that he learned from working with his wife Sandy that it can be beneficial to have both spouses working at the same place. “It’s almost better for you to understand each other’s daily challenges, to appreciate each other and work together toward a common goal,” he says. “I believe [Barb and Rodd] enjoy the fact that they’re working together.”

The horticulture industry has treated Barb well over the past 25 years. “People in this industry have an appreciation for plants and flowers for sure, but the people are what make [the industry] interesting,” she says. Jeffery’s Greenhouses works with a small group of contract growers, which Barb enjoys because she’s able to get out and see other greenhouses and new faces. “I don’t think there are too many people in this industry that I have met that haven’t been very friendly,” she says.

It’s also a sharing industry, in Barb’s opinion. “There are different relationships where it’s more competitive and maybe you’re not an open book, but there’s always something that you can share with each other for everyone to be more successful,” she says.

“Barb is also actively encouraging different members of our team here at Jeffery’s to participate in industry organizations and in efforts to educate young horticulturists,” says Albert Grimm, Jeffery’s Greenhouses’ head grower. “To this end, it is important to note that Barb supports the sharing of some proprietary information when it benefits all of the industry.”

The relationships that she’s developed over the years have been vital to her accomplishments. “I truly believe that a large part of the success I’ve had has been due to the relationship-building I continue to incorporate into everything I do,” Barb says.

Prior to working exclusively with Home Depot, as they do now, Jeffery’s main customer was White Rose Crafts and Nursery Sales. Barb says that she considers the White Rose buyer, Erica Metcalfe, to be one of her early mentors. “She embraced the fact that I was young, enthusiastic and passionate about [horticulture] and was willing [to learn],” Barb says.

When White Rose filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2002, it was bad news for Jeffery’s — but not as bad as it could’ve been. “We had a lot of eggs in the basket with White Rose and then they filed Chapter 11 and we had to quickly change things,” Barb explains. However, because of the strong relationship they had with White Rose, Jeffery’s requested and received prepayment for their plants before the company went under. Other suppliers weren’t as lucky.

An industry mentor

The relationships Barb has built have also included mentorships. Barb has served as a mentor to Niki Radke, who has worked with Barb in the sales department since 2004. She says Barb took her under her wing and kickstarted her career in the horticulture industry. “I really don’t know where I would be if Barb did not open her doors to me. The skills and leadership she has shown me [have] impacted my life and play a huge part of who I am today as a young woman in the industry,” Niki says. “She has been an amazing mentor to me and has given me life-changing opportunities that I will be forever grateful for.”

And Niki looks up to Barb on a personal level, too. “I can truly say Barb is the Princess Diana of the horticultural industry,” Niki says. “Anyone who has had the opportunity to work with her or meet her would say the same. She always greets you with a smile. She is humble, kind, gracious, inspiring, strong, courteous and resilient like no other. She is very well-liked and respected in the industry. Not to mention she has amazing fashion sense.”

Barb was just beginning to take on a leadership role and implement her unique vision for Jeffery’s when she hired Albert Grimm to her production team. However, she didn’t hire Albert to fill a pre-determined position, instead offering him the opportunity to develop his role as he worked with the existing team and implemented a new form of greenhouse growing. Looking back, Albert says that “was a brilliant idea.” He says he desperately needed a platform to apply his knowledge, and this was it.

“When I started working for Jeffery’s Greenhouses, I was quite frankly frustrated with our entire profession and with its lack of opportunity for ambitious specialists to develop meaningful careers,” Albert says. “For me, it was a stroke of luck to get hired by Barb and to be able to work with the fantastic team that she has created here at the company. Barb has not only provided me with the opportunity to unfold the career that I was seeking, but she has actively encouraged my professional and personal development.” He says that since then, he has worked each day to provide plant material at the quality and time that fulfills Barb’s market plans.

A born leader

Sandy Jeffery can remember examples of Barb’s leadership dating all the way back to primary school, when Barb would be the teacher if she was playing school with her friends. When she was 15 and in high school, Barb led a ski trip to Quebec City. “She hired the bus and did the advertising with her friend and they got everything together,” Sandy recalls.

After the trip, Sandy says that the bus company called to say that they wouldn’t refund her deposit because of some damage — gum on the seats or something of the like. “I sensed that there was a problem on the other end, and I stood beside her and said, ‘Let me talk to them,’” Sandy recalls. “And she waved her hand at me [to] get away, [she would] talk to them. I’ll never forget that, because that’s what Barb is like. If there’s a problem, she deals with it herself. She never passes it on to anybody else. And the thing is, she’s very capable of doing it. She handles it so well. Pretty much everyone [at the company] turns to her.”

At Jeffery’s, Barb takes charge as needed, but also lets her staff do their jobs without micromanaging and carve their own path to achieving their goals. “We give them some direction, but we really allow them to do the job that we’ve hired them to,” she says. “Sometimes that works for the people that we’ve hired and sometimes it doesn’t work.” For Albert, this method works well. “Barb’s management style fosters excellence at every level and she is very conscientious about recognizing and rewarding dedication to the tasks and goals of the company,” he says.

Albert says that Barb has very high expectations for product quality and program execution, but her goals are achievable because of the support that the staff receives. “The team at Jeffery’s works with high benchmarks, and we are fully supported to bring our capacity to effect in reaching these benchmarks,” he says. “There are very few companies that implement this principle as authentically as Jeffery’s. It is not just lip-service. Passion for greenhouse production is a job requirement, and it is very rewarding for all of us to be able to live this passion.”

Another key to Barb’s management success is her preference for direct, face-to-face communication, even when an email might be easier. “[I prefer] dealing with things directly and being honest about them, whether good or bad,” she says. “Communication is key for everything. Over-communicating something is better than under-communicating.” She cautions managers against only sending an email if a matter needs to be dealt with, because they’re working with people in the greenhouse who may not be checking their email regularly. Also, “sometimes it’s easier to explain over the phone or in-person, particularly if your news isn’t going to sit well with the person.” In the latter case, “You’re better to deal with it in person,” she says.

Overall, she says that the key staff at Jeffery’s is very capable, and she lets them do what they do best. “They’re passionate about what they do, they have a strong sense of ownership and pride in what they contribute, and really we’re very fortunate to have good people in those key positions,” she says. Albert says that Barb, who is a “brilliant expert in the marketing of plants, but not a horticulturist,” doesn’t interfere with day-to-day production matters so long as the growing team is executing production plans as expected. “This is an important reason for the success of the company, because it allows all the production experts to do their work to their full capacity,” he says.

Fashion meets flowers

When she’s not managing staff, Barb enjoys working on the more creative side of the business. She’s always had a flair for fashion and was excited to see how much of her fashion background could be incorporated into her current role. “I was surprised coming out of school how much I could apply,” she says. “Something that I still enjoy doing today is making all of our mixed planter combinations. I don’t think I would be out of line saying I was a bit of a pioneer back then with making the different mixed plant combinations, in terms of unique designs and incorporating things that work well together.”

Niki says that she has seen first-hand how Barb has used her fashion and design education to identify global trends that could be transferred to the North American market. “She is a strategic member on the grower counsels of our major big-box customer,” Niki says. “Her educational background in fashion arts has made her one of the go-to persons on these counsels when choosing floral and container combinations.”

Barb tries to bring excitement and new mixes each year to their offerings. She says that the incorporation of more textures and different foliage into combinations is trending now, as is adding tropicals.

Women in horticulture

One of the ways Barb keeps up on trends is through her position on the board of Luxflora, “a visionary, women-led, nonprofit, professional floriculture organization.” “Luxflora advocates for women in the floriculture industry and offers networking opportunities,” she says. “It’s a place for women to learn from one another, share ideas and encourage women to achieve their goals and flourish.”

Recently, Barb has been honing in on the decorating with plants trend and how it’s been driving industry growth. “Women understand this as part of everyday life,” she says. “Whether it be accessorizing an outfit or room in the house, setting the table for company, decorating the backyard…. the options are endless. There is further opportunity to incorporate flowers into everyday life and feed this demand.”

One of the biggest benefits of belonging to Luxflora is the opportunity to network with other talented women, she says. “Because I’ve been around for 25 years, I can also offer advice,” she says. “I’ve learned a lot of things over the years and I’ve made mistakes too and I can provide mentorship.” Barb has found herself in a wide range of tough situations, including ones of a more sensitive nature, and always tries to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Barb thinks that women have a lot to offer to the industry. “They have a genuine female consumer-oriented perspective, among other fine qualities,” she says. And to support women entering the horticulture industry in positions of leadership, she says the industry just needs to “give them a chance,” much like her father gave her a chance to lead the sales department. “A lot of young women want to build a career, and it’s just giving them a chance,” she says. “I think that they probably would offer a different perspective too, right? I think all businesses need to inject some new blood into the business. Things can’t stay the same forever.”

A bright future

Barb’s outlook on the coming years is optimistic, as she sees much potential for growth for the horticulture industry. “I see it flourishing and continuing,” she says. “I think that there are still opportunities, especially in the shoulder seasons of our main bedding plant business.” After the spring of 2018, when most of North America seemed to skip straight from winter to summer weather, Barb says she would probably look more toward the summer and fall for shoulder season opportunities. Online business is going to play a larger role in the future of horticulture, too, Barb predicts.

She also foresees more women entering into the industry in varying roles. “I think that you do see more women coming into the business from the early days when I was probably the only one or [one of] only two in meetings or going on a trip to Europe,” she says. And this, Barb says, is a good thing. “We all know a large portion of our consumer [base] is female, so any female influence is a plus in this industry,” she says.

But overall, Barb says she “remains positive about the future of the industry.”

As for her own future, after 25 years at Jeffery’s, it’s hard to imagine stepping away from the greenhouse. “I love what I do, and I’m confident that I am where I should be,” Barb says. “I found passion for this business in my early 20s and that spark is still here today.”

However, Barb has given her eventual retirement some thought, hoping to spend more time with her husband Rodd, children Abigail and Mathew and the rest of her family, and possibly doing some traveling. She’s also pondered getting back into the arts and sketching, as she used to do when she was younger. Whatever she does, it will surely include flowers.

Peter Orum learned the value of hard work at a young age. His father made him his first undersized wheelbarrow when he was five years old, growing up on his parents’ two-acre nursery in northern Denmark.

“The deal was, we kids would work in the nursery and we were not paid for that,” Peter says. “We each got a plot of land where we could grow vegetables.”

The Orum children travelled with their father to the market, bicycles loaded with their harvest. They were able to keep the money from any vegetables they sold. It effectively taught Peter a lesson that has served him well throughout his life.

“You got nothing without work,” he says.

A horticultural engineer

At 15, Peter left his family’s nursery in Jutland, Denmark. In keeping with the traditional European model, he took apprenticeships at Spejlborg and Vilvorde Nurseries before continuing his education at the Vilvorde Horticulture School in Copenhagen.

Then, he enlisted in the Danish army.

“Back in those days, in the Cold War, young men had two choices,” he says. “Either you enlisted or you were drafted.”

Volunteers had to serve a longer term, but they earned some money and had some say in where they were sent. Peter was accepted into the Army Corps of Engineers, where he rose in the ranks. He became a sergeant and later an officer. As combat and construction engineers, members of the corps would do anything from building roads, airstrips and bridges to training with demolition and as regular combat soldiers. Peter learned much in the army that helped mold his business acumen, but the most useful skills were organization and interpersonal communication.

“I learned a lot about how to deal with people, organize things, keep things straight,” he says. “Many people comment that they can see that in the nursery.”

His army experience even gave him a foot in the door across the ocean. After his second army contract, Peter wanted to return to his trade, but he also wanted to see more of the world. He set his eyes on the United States.

His plan was to stay for a couple of years, learn something about the trade and return to Denmark and start a nursery. In 1965, when Peter was 23, he was hired by Jack Hill, general manager of D. Hill Nursery Company in Dundee, Ill.

“My first boss in America said, ‘I didn’t hire you for what you knew about horticulture. I hired you because you were an officer in the army,’” Peter says.

After a few months of training, Peter was quickly promoted to superintendent of propagation and served in this position for almost seven years. However, a few factors conspired to change the course of Peter’s plan and his life. Most notably, he met Irma Hertzmann, his wife-to-be, in a Danish club in Chicago. She was born in Chicago of Danish parents; she went to the club to learn Danish. They were married in 1967, and the newlywed couple traveled to Denmark to explore the possibility of starting a nursery there. Peter visited with a former teacher at the horticulture school to share his idea.

“He was a very blunt man; he told me it would be a very bad idea, which was not what I needed to convince the new wife to move to Denmark,” Peter says. “I asked him ‘Why?’ And he said ‘Because we have too many damn plants over here. You should stay where you are and grow plants.’”

On the trip back to America, Irma and Peter decided to start their own nursery in Illinois.

The birth of Midwest Groundcovers

The early days of what would become Midwest Groundcovers were anything but lavish. In 1969, Peter and Irma stuck 12,000 groundcover cuttings in the West Chicago backyard of their friend and mentor, John Wilde. Later that same year, the Orums purchased five acres of land on Illinois Route 25, just north of St. Charles, Ill., and they moved the 12,000 groundcover cuttings to that location. He had no employees, just a dream and the passion to make it happen.

“It was my wife and I and family and friends that would come on the weekend and would work for beer and hamburgers,” Peter says. “Today, it’s not quite that way. We have more than 300 people working today. And they won’t work for beer and hamburgers anymore!”

The nursery evolved little by little into the well-oiled machine that cranks out 20 million plants each year. Irma used skills learned in her business administration experience in Chicago to help nurture the new company. In 1972, Peter hired his first employee.

“You double from 1 to 2 or 2 to 4 and it doesn’t look like much,” Peter says. “But when you double from 100 to 200, all of a sudden it starts looking like something.”

While the nursery grew, Peter supplemented his horticultural knowledge, management and construction skills from the Danish Army Corps of Engineers by taking night courses to learn accounting and business. In 1978, he earned a bachelor of science in finance and accounting from Northern Illinois University.

The Orums also welcomed children into their lives. Christa Orum-Keller, Peter and Irma’s daughter, is currently the chairman of the board. She grew up at the nursery, but it was not a given that she would take over the family business.

“When my kids were in preschool, they asked what my preschool was like,” Christa says. “It was me in the middle of the original five-acre nursery playing in the sandbox and on the swing set they built for me, while my parents worked around me. It was enjoyable and comfortable and I was surrounded by caring family and beautiful plants in the outdoors. As I grew older, my parents were never pushing me to be involved with the business and my interest came over a long period of time. I saw it as our way of life — a wholesome way to make a living while contributing to a most wonderful improvement of the world around us.”

In addition to a master’s degree in business administration, a bachelor’s in landscape architecture and an associate’s in horticulture, Christa is a Licensed Landscape Architect and an Illinois Certified Nursery Professional. She planned and designed Midwest Groundcovers’ St. Charles headquarters, sales, distribution and trial garden facility, a project that was completed in 1994. Since 2017, Christa has been the chairman of Midwest Groundcovers and Midwest Trading Horticultural Supplies, a wholesale supplier of nursery and greenhouse mixes that the Orums founded in 1981. Peter is still on the board, but his role has changed. The decisions are no longer his to make, but at 76 years old, he’s at peace with that. Now, he tries to help as he can, in the background.

An inspiration to others

One of the toughest tasks for any entrepreneur is letting go. Like many nurserymen, Peter knew plants. Running a business was different. He learned that there are different levels of delegation. First, you do everything yourself. Then, you hire a foreman and a crew and send them on certain tasks. But he says the level that determines whether your fledgling company will grow or collapse is if you can delegate areas of responsibility, not just tasks. One of the keys to Midwest’s success has been Peter’s ability to delegate to managers, then manage the managers.

“You have to learn to do that, and you have to learn how to feel good about it,” he says. “That’s the scariest thing for most people, especially those who have done things themselves. To cut out areas of responsibility and say, ‘OK, manager Jones, this is your responsibility now. You don’t report everything you’ve done, you keep me updated on how things are going and I keep an eye on it, and we plan things together.’ Many people are afraid they lose control that way. But the only way to be happy, and to function, is to develop yourself so you can feel good and accomplished by seeing others do the things you did.”

This level of delegation requires a willingness to let your employees stretch and grow, without swooping in to fix every little thing.

Joe Hobson is president and COO of Midwest Trading Horticultural Supplies, which is within the Midwest family of companies. Hobson joined the company in 2013 after 25 years in the landscape industry. He’s enjoyed working with Peter and Christa because of the trust they’ve placed in him.

“They did not micromanage and still don’t,” Joe says. “I think their expectations of me is ‘That’s your job, to run the company.’ Peter has always been that way. His vision is to try to get the right people in the right spot, give them a degree of direction and let them go.”

One of Peter’s longest-tenured employees is Gary Knosher, who recently celebrated 40 years with Midwest Groundcovers. He was hired as a plant propagator and worked his way up to become the company’s current president and CEO.

“Peter has many fine qualities, but what stands out to me is he is a true example of an entrepreneur,” Gary says. “He has passion, motivation and total commitment to the cause, whatever that might be. He is not afraid to take risks, and he has a strong sense of self — his likes, dislikes, goals and where he wants to go. The benefit to me and to anyone else who has worked in the Midwest companies, is that he has created many opportunities for those who have chosen to take them.”

Those opportunities may be within the Midwest family of companies, or they may lay elsewhere. As Midwest Groundcovers continued to grow, the Orums kept their entrepreneurial itch. In 1981, they founded Midwest Trading. In 1986, they founded Midwest GROmaster, a company that designs and manufactures EBB-FLO benches and provides custom irrigation solutions for other growers.

“We have many employees that have been here for 20 years or more,” Gary says. “For those he has inspired to be entrepreneurs, they are no longer here, and are out running their own successful companies, if they paid attention.”

Gary, of course, decided to stay. As he climbed the ladder from propagator to production manager, sales manager, and now president and CEO, he has remained grateful for the opportunities. But that’s how Peter operates: He gives people he trusts chances to grow, and if they make the most of them, they can go far.

“I have had the opportunity to travel and see other nurseries and other countries,” Gary says. “I have had the opportunity to meet and work with some of the most wonderful people in, and outside of the company, and to be involved in this great industry. To sum it up, he has created the opportunity for me to carve out a career in doing the things I love to do.”

Peter’s desire to see his employees accomplish more and more led him to begin a series of in-house management training classes that he would run with Midwest’s HR manager. The classes take place during the winter and cover subjects like how to be a manager, how to be a better communicator, how to be more organized — useful topics for upwardly mobile employees. He expects a lot from his team, but he provides the resources for them to succeed.

“Respect people,” Peter says. “Be honest with them. Be stern with them. We have to get the work done, and we are here to get the work done together. One thing I preach in my in-house training classes is to forget the word ‘I.’ It is ‘we’ that are doing these things. Some people, especially salesmen, love to say ‘I can get you 200 of those; I will get it delivered before the other guys.’ But I can’t do a damn thing without ‘we’ being together doing it.”

Joe Hobson says one of Peter’s most inspiring qualities as a leader are his excellent listening skills and his respectful demeanor. Christa Orum-Keller concurs, saying her father is a great teacher who always wants people to understand the “why” behind what they do.

“When I was 5, there was a need to expand production space in the original five-acre nursery,” Christa says. “The new greenhouse was planned to cover the area where my sandbox was and my father asked me if it would be OK if we relocated the sandbox. Being asked and included in the plans at such a young age made an impression and was meaningful to me. It illustrates one of the ways Peter is good at connecting deeply with people and understanding their motivation. The sandbox was moved and the greenhouse is still there growing plants for us.”

A (inter)national perspective

In the beginning, Peter didn’t have time for anything but building his business. But as the Midwest family of companies grew and he began to learn to delegate, Peter began getting involved with associations. In the 1980s, he joined the Illinois Nurserymen’s Association, which then became the Illinois Green Industry Association, and was president from 1991 to 1992.

Peter also served many years on the board of the Horticultural Research Institute (HRI), the research arm of the American Nursery and Landscape Association (ANLA) — now AmericanHort. He has been instrumental in establishing many HRI funds, four from the Midwest companies, including The John E. Wilde Propagation Fund, in honor of mentor John Wilde; The Lydia & Palle H. Orum Research Fund, in honor of Peter’s parents; and the Orum-Midwest Research Fund; in honor of HRI’s 50-year anniversary. Peter was president of HRI before joining the ANLA’s board, where he was president from 2004 to 2005. In 2001, Peter was named Grower of the Year by Nursery Management magazine.

Becoming a player in the national associations meant getting involved with politics. But putting on his political hat was never something Peter shied away from, and going to Washington to speak for his fellow growers as an association representative was a job he took very seriously.

“You have to be careful that you know which hat you have on at the time,” he says.

As an immigrant himself, Peter has a unique perspective on the immigration debate. But as a business owner in an industry that relies heavily on temporary labor from foreign countries, it’s a constant frustration.

“In all my years of political work, my biggest disappointment is that we did not get a comprehensive immigration reform,” Peter says. “It is that we didn’t get papers for those who are here and we did not get a guest worker program that functions. Will we get it someday? Yes, because we have to, but things don’t look real good right now.”

The landscapers, nurseries and independent garden centers that Midwest sells its plants to are buying, but the labor shortage is making it difficult to take advantage of the strong economy.

“I feel very good about having provided a livelihood for hundreds and hundreds or maybe thousands of families over the years,” Peter says. “It takes a lot of great people to do good things. It is only with good people that you can do it. We have and have had some very great managers who went to college for one thing or another and we have had a tremendous bunch of Mexican families working for us. In these days when there’s all the talk about throwing everybody out, I will certainly say if it hadn’t been for the Mexican people, there wouldn’t have been much of a nursery.”

Labor shortage or not, the business has kept evolving.

For decades, recycling, reuse and reduction of waste have been part of Midwest Groundcovers’ regular practices. Environmentally responsible habits such as integrated pest management and water runoff recycling at production facilities are a way of life. Midwest reuses plant containers, recycles growing shelter plastic and integrates vegetated swales into production facilities. While most nurseries dispose of all covering plastic each year, Midwest is one of the few nurseries to reuse 70 percent of it annually. The nursery works with recycling firms that recycle all non-reusable covering plastic and containers.

Midwest facilities also collect and burn wood, office paper and cardboard using the heat generated to warm greenhouses for ivy, perennial propagation, woody plant propagation and sedum production. At Midwest’s newest nursery, 90 percent of the irrigation water is reused.

The product mix has evolved, as well. “We do more than just old-fashioned groundcovers,” Peter says. Midwest grows more than 500 varieties of perennials and ornamental grasses, 275 different shrubs and evergreens, 250 species of native plants and yes, 130 types of groundcovers.

While sometimes a business owner has to make short-term decisions, Peter has always kept an eye on the long-term.

“Look at his vision — 15 to 20 years ago, this was a cornfield,” Joe Hobson says. “That took a lot of thinking, planning and doing to build this wonderful facility. Now we stand on their shoulders. It’s up to us to continue to work on those long-term goals and be the next generation of what we’re building so the next generation can stand on us.”

They’d do well to remember one of Peter’s frequent quotes: “Life is not always easy, but it is always interesting.”

Although he grew up immersed in a Virginia-based landscaping business that his father started in 1956, Greenbrier Nurseries, Jim Monroe’s passion for plants wasn’t fully ignited until he took horticulture classes at Virginia Tech in the ’80s. “I grew up around it and really didn’t want to do what I’m doing now, but I didn’t really know much,” Jim recounts. His summers were spent working at Greenbrier Nurseries with landscape crews, but he thought his path would lead him to a different career. However, after completing several horticulture courses at Virginia Tech, “I got impassioned with the plants,” he says.

Jim says that he credits a lot of that interest in plants to a professor at Virginia Tech’s Department of Horticulture, Dr. James (Jim) Coartney, who taught a course on woody plant identification. In that class, Dr. Coartney used the “Manual of Woody Landscape Plants,” (what Jim dubbed the “Dirr Bible”) teaching them how to identify plants and cultivars, and “everything from maples to rhododendrons,” he says.

“I just went overboard. I totally loved it and I think that was the moment in time, that class, where I had a dynamic shift of really being in love with horticulture,” Jim remembers. In 2012, Jim would receive the Outstanding Alumnus award for the School of Agriculture from Dr. Coartney, who Jim says commented that he’d “never had a kid that was so impassioned with plants” as Jim was. “I don’t [always] love the business and all [the challenges that] come with it, but I really do love the plants,” Jim says.

One Christmas, Jim received another book that further cemented his plant obsession, “Japanese Maples” by J.D. Vertrees. “After I got that book, I was totally obsessive-compulsive to have all these different varieties of Japanese maples,” he says. “Japanese maples is what got me hooked on the industry more than anything else.”

Around 1986, Jim convinced his father to build three production greenhouses to start a growing division in the business. Each year, Greenbrier built a few more greenhouses, and the expansion continued after Jim’s graduation in 1989. “By the time we got to 1993 or 1994, we had about 50 or 60 houses,” Jim says. In 1997, Greenbrier Nurseries purchased another farm on which they built another 60 or 70 greenhouses. By that point, Greenbrier Nurseries had 20 acres of container nursery stock and five or six acres of greenhouse space.

Jim now owns Greenbrier Nurseries, a grower-retailer that produces annuals, perennials, edibles and woody plants. In 2016, Greenbrier won the Small Business of the Year award from the Roanoke Chamber of Commerce. Jim says that the competition was fierce, and they were incredibly honored to beat out the other candidates. “We were up against this tech firm that had all these amazing projects going on all over the world, and a company here that does software for pharmaceutical companies,” he remembers. “We were up against these companies and we’re a garden center selling food [at our CSA and farmers market], and we won. That was a big deal.”

Photo by Richard Boyd

Supporting independents

Jim also founded and leads Hort Couture Plants, a plant brand that “brings innovative annual flowers, vegetables and herbs to the marketplace with style and fashion,” according to its mission statement. Since its launch in 2008, Jim has limited the plant sales to independent growers and garden center retailers so that they could “have proprietary new plant genetics to help them compete with the big box growth in the marketplace.” That means coleus with unique foliage, tomatoes with golden leaves, Monarch butterfly-supporting asclepias, and other interesting plants that appeal to consumers’ desire for something different and growing their own food. Jim depends on his strong relationships with breeders as he seeks out new and interesting plants to bring into the brand.

Jim has remained steadfast in this strategy and belief in supporting the independents, which has been noted across the industry. “Jim always said Hort Couture is for independent garden centers only,” industry colleague and owner of Peace Tree Farm Lloyd Traven says. “‘It will not go into any chains. It will not go into any groceries. I won’t do it.’”

Another significant way Jim has been a leader for independent businesses has been through the creation of IGC Talk, a private Facebook group exclusively for independent garden center retailers. Jim, Lloyd Traven, Ellison Chair in International Floriculture at Texas A&M University Charlie Hall, retail garden center consultant John Stanley, and green industry consultant Sid Raisch co-founded it about six years ago as a community group and forum for independent retailers. “It seems like it’s a silly thing that it’s a Facebook page, but we are really impacting the industry,” Jim says. “That thing is like the social conscience of the industry.”

The topics of conversation on the IGC Talk page, which has a couple thousand members, can range from discussions about employee health benefits to product sourcing to problems with suppliers to simply sharing funny customer stories, Jim says. Lloyd describes IGC Talk as a “safe place to talk, to unload, to ask a question, to get information.” Jim founded it with one purpose — to push IGCs to communicate, innovate and improve their businesses. “To me it’s remarkable that he created that [safe space] and has kept that going for all this time,” Lloyd says. “[Jim] never gives up. He has a vision. And 99 percent of this industry simply repeats what they do over, and over, and over again. And he’s trying to change it up. Congratulations to him for doing it.”

There have been many examples of the real-life impact that this digital forum has had, Jim says. Earlier this year Sid started a discussion about spring pricing strategies that many retailers participated in, Jim says. In the spring, many of the retailers implemented those strategies and were able to increase their bottom line in a significant way. “I think it’s the most powerful voice in the industry,” Jim says. “The people on there are willing to say what they think, and they know that it’s not going to go back out into the industry.”

Jack of all trades

Throughout the years, Jim has gained experience through a variety of roles and responsibilities at Greenbrier Nurseries and Hort Couture, including greenhouse and nursery production, garden center retail, distribution, landscaping and plant genetics. “I have a unique, different perspective than most people because I’ve spent my whole life dealing with nearly every single facet of ornamental horticulture from growing food to garden center retail,” Jim says. He says that he has been able to carry out both the creative and the business-related tasks because he’s always been “pretty well-balanced between right brain and left brain.”

Jim says he’s lucky in that he loves what he does and is willing to work hard to accomplish his goals. “It’s not a job for me,” he says. “It’s who I am.”

Lloyd says that Jim is intelligent, charismatic and driven. “He has always had a vision of what he wants to do, and he’s willing to work incredibly hard to make that happen,” Lloyd says. “He’s relentless. He does not give up, ever, and he doesn’t stop. I have a lot of respect for that.” Jim doesn’t shy away from having difficult discussions and addressing sensitive topics. “He makes a difference because he talks about things that need to be said that are uncomfortable,” Lloyd says. “There are times when he gets on a roll and won’t let it go. And that’s exactly what we need. We need somebody who says the stuff that has to be said as an industry.”

When Jim’s not hunting for the next big plant for Hort Couture or running Greenbrier Nurseries, he enjoys golfing and playing the piano. “I guess at one point I thought I wanted to be a professional golfer,” Jim says. He had college scholarships to “two or three pretty good schools” to major in piano, and others to play golf. “I could’ve picked either one of those passions,” he says. While he may have pursued a career in horticulture, as his father did before him, instead of golf or piano, “Those two hobbies are things that I still love and still do.”

Looking for the next generation of plant people

Having been in the industry for his entire life in various roles, Jim has plenty of advice for young professionals, but says that the key advice he gives is, “Be ready to have a long day with a lot of different things going on.”

Greenbrier Nurseries works with Virginia Tech’s horticulture students, and Jim tells students to follow their passion. “If you are just sitting there in a major because this is what you maybe thought you wanted to do, and when you are closing the plant books you’re not thinking about plants at night or want to go out and look at plants when you’re not in school, you’re wasting your time,” he says. “Go do what you love.”

Although it can be a challenge to find and identify people like this, Jim says his best employees are those who share that same passion for plants and horticulture. It’s this passion that gets him through the chaotic moments. He may briefly question what he’s doing, but he loves horticulture and that “why” always brings him back to center.