When Suncrest Nurseries’ founder, Stan Iverson, tragically passed in 2014, the future of the operation was uncertain. With long-time horticulture director Nevin Smith preparing for retirement around the same time, Suncrest faced major leadership changes.

To navigate the transition smoothly, the board brought in a business consultant named Christine Jennifer. Jennifer’s family was uniquely aware of the business, as her family owns some shares of the nursery. She was also a former customer who had purchased plants from Suncrest while running a small landscaping business while she was in between consulting gigs. Using her business acumen and horticulture background to take a fresh look at the operation, Jennifer quickly identified opportunities for Suncrest to reorganize, diversify, expand and evolve into the next era of leadership.

Suncrest soon invited Jennifer to step in as interim president to lead the company’s transformation, making the position permanent by fall of 2014. Since then, Jennifer has navigated several significant shifts to position Suncrest for continued growth.

“It’s been exciting to look at how we can manage our resources and organize this company in a way that’s as efficient as possible,” she says, “so we can change and flex with the times.”

Taking control of inventory

Suncrest started in 1989 when Iverson purchased the remnants of a 100-year-old nursery near the foothills of the Pajaro Valley. He continued the growing tradition there as he doubled the size of the nursery to offer more than 3,000 varieties. Suncrest became widely known for its vast plant diversity, spanning a broad selection of California natives, flowering shrubs, perennials, vines, grasses, bamboos and ferns.

Analyzing this massive inventory was a daunting challenge that Jennifer had to conquer. Early on, she spent time shadowing employees in various roles to understand different aspects of the operation — which spans nearly 100 acres across several parcels, including 70 acres of irrigated outdoor production space and about 5 acres of greenhouses and covered structures.

“There’s a lot of effort, time and costs that go into growing plants. A single plant might get touched by 13 different employees before it leaves,” Jennifer says. “I did a lot of analysis to understand what it truly costs to grow the plants we grow, to make sure we’re protecting our margins.”

To make sense of all the data surrounding Suncrest’s production, Jennifer implemented new inventory management software to track labor, sales, materials, turnaround times and more. The software provides “better control of our inventory,” she says, because “we have more data with which to make better decisions.”

Although it took a couple years to catalog every plant in the new database, the process helped Suncrest assess which plants sold consistently and which ones just depleted precious greenhouse resources. Based on this comprehensive data, Suncrest downsized its inventory from 3,500 varieties to about 800, based on factors like “cost, time to grow and likelihood of sale,” Jennifer says. Meanwhile, she increased the prices of certain varieties to keep profit margins in check.

“It’s a lot of work to analyze this data,” she says, “but we have to keep up with the increase in labor and material costs, and look at actually improving our margins so we can have the longevity and stability to maintain the business.”

Planning production more precisely

During her inventory analysis, Jennifer realized just how long certain plant material sat around before selling — if it sold at all. She knew there had to be a better way to improve turnaround time, minimize waste, and maximize limited resources.

“We were doing a lot of speculative production based on historical knowledge and faith in our customers, but that’s not a precise plan,” she says. “One of the ways to improve turnaround is to grow with more precision, which means growing what you know for sure you’re going to sell. So, our sales approach has changed to focus more on making orders rather than taking orders.”

That need for more sales certainty sparked the idea to launch a contract grow program that allows customers to pre-order specific varieties that are produced precisely to their specifications and schedules. A 50% deposit secures the customer’s order and helps Suncrest plan.

“It’s a concierge service where you get what you want, when you want it,” Jennifer says. “The contract grow program allows us to do more planned production with less guesswork, which is intrinsically more efficient because there’s less risk and less waste.”

The program creates a partnership between Suncrest and its customers, making production planning a collaborative process. If customers want to buy plants that have been cut from Suncrest’s inventory, they can simply request a custom contract grow arrangement to get the plant back in production.

Suncrest has landed contracts to grow plants for museums, stadiums and wineries along the West Coast — including some “quirky and wild varieties” custom grown for Star Wars Land at Disneyland Resort.

Since launching two years ago, the contract grow program has grown to comprise over 12% of Suncrest’s annual revenue, with more potential ahead.

Diversifying the customer base

As Suncrest’s sales approach evolved from “taking orders” to “making orders,” Jennifer found opportunities to diversify the nursery’s customer base — which had been primarily wholesale since the business started.

“Up until five years ago, 90% of our business came from wholesale brokers,” Jennifer says. “Now, about 65 to 70% of our business is retail.”

She noticed that retail buyers often pre-order plant material as they plan seasonal merchandising, whereas wholesale brokers tend to order less predictably from availability lists. “Larger retailers know more precisely what they need and when they need it,” Jennifer says. “As we moved our production planning to be less speculative and more focused on the plans of our customers, we’ve organically grown in the direction of retail.”

To support this natural trend toward retail pre-sales, Jennifer hired more outside sales reps to focus on these customers. As she evaluated new markets for retail sales potential, she saw opportunity in the Pacific Northwest, and in 2018, she hired a business development manager, James Szadek, to lead Suncrest’s expansion beyond California.

“Over the years, Suncrest had gardeners from the Pacific Northwest that would call down and inquire about plants. There were even some garden centers that would send down trucks,” says Szadek, who previously worked with Monrovia, which introduced him to plant retailers throughout the area. “We thought, with our diversified plant mix, we’d be able to add to the gardening community in the Pacific Northwest, where curious gardeners are always looking for new and different plants that are suited to that area.”

The biggest challenge selling across state lines was figuring out the shipping logistics. Instead of sending its own trucks up the coast, Suncrest uses common carriers, which consolidate freight for multiple companies to offer partial truckloads.

“You can grow beautiful plants, but then delivering them out of state in a timely fashion is a challenge, so you have to see how your product delivers and how it holds up in garden centers,” Szadek says. “Finding a good trucking company that understood our needs has helped us grow in the territory tremendously. It’s not just partnering with our customers, but with the people who help us get there.”

Building a production team

Soon after Jennifer joined Suncrest, she hired a new production manager. But after about five years, he began phasing out of his role at the nursery to run his own farm. Instead of starting a new search to fill the position, Jennifer leaned on the team she had in place.

“There are so many experts at Suncrest who have knowledge of different production areas,” she realized. “It made sense to work as a team.”

Jennifer reassigned the production manager’s job functions to eight different supervisors. Anibal Gonzales picked up labor management responsibilities, Araceli Gonzales became production coordinator overseeing plant inventory, Leonel Morales took over propagation, and Zeto Figueroa and Pancho Velasquez head up production of general inventory and the contract grow program. Szadek and sales manager, Victor Quintero, also collaborate with the team, and Suncrest’s long-time horticulture director even came out of retirement to serve as senior advisor.

“We’re constantly looking at new opportunities ... and trying to do it as ecofriendly as possible.” — Christine Jennifer

While each manager has “a core area of purview,” Jennifer explains, everyone has a voice through shared decision-making. Constant communication is the key to keeping the whole team aligned as they focus on their respective areas.

“Just because someone supervises propagation doesn’t mean they are the only voice of propagation,” Jennifer says. “They all have a voice in what we’re doing, so a lot of communication happens throughout the week to make sure we’re all on the same page.”

The production management team meets regularly in what Jennifer calls “metronome meetings” to sync up their individual aspects of the overall production. “It helps to eliminate confusion, so everybody knows what’s going in in the nursery each week,” she says. “It keeps us accountable and engaged with each other.”

One of the reasons this team approach works is because everyone on the team has been working in horticulture — and some, at Suncrest specifically — for several decades, so they’re committed to a common goal of producing quality plants. “They have a deep respect for one another and a real loyalty to the company,” she says. “If people understand the whole beyond their own purview, it organically creates a team environment.”

Inspiring a healthy community

While exploring new avenues of growth, Jennifer made a point to “clarify and reinstate Suncrest’s mission,” which is “growing life and beauty to inspire healthy community,” she says. That means continually “looking for ways to be greener, grow greener and cut back on waste.”

The nursery captures irrigation runoff for reuse, fuels its tractors with biodiesel fuel, and recycles plant material for composting. A couple years ago, Suncrest started making its own soil, with mixes tailored to promote plant health and reduce the use of additives. This greener approach gives growers more control over the soil, at a huge cost savings to the nursery.

Suncrest even has a small parcel of land that’s certified organic and biodynamic — which means that it meets the chemical-free requirements for organic certification, but takes additional steps to ensure biological diversity, soil fertility and holistic ecological health by emphasizing the use of composts and crop rotations. This parcel produces Suncrest’s Eco-Conscious Beauty line, which features quart-sized edible medicinal, habitat and native plants.

Though consumer interest in healthy edibles has been increasing for years, Jennifer says the recent pandemic underscored this demand. For several months, California only allowed nurseries to remain open for “production of edibles and essential production to maintain the value of our inventory,” she explains, which meant Suncrest had to quickly shift its focus away from ornamentals.

“We weren’t doing a lot of production (during COVID), but we did increase our production of edibles because people were interested in that,” Jennifer says. “It helped build sales during a strange time.”

After a slow March and April, Suncrest experienced its “best May on record” as the nursery responded to pent-up demand caused by COVID. Although restrictions have lifted and production has returned to normal, Suncrest plans to increase its biodynamic production to keep pace with the ongoing edibles trend.

“We’re constantly looking at new opportunities to stay current as the world’s changing,” Jennifer says, “and trying to do it as ecofriendly as possible.”

The author is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to Greenhouse Management magazine.

Identifying where to mechanize or automate is not an easy task. Most businesses have a limited amount of capital for mechanization and it is important to get maximum return.

A good starting point is to measure the amount of time that goes into the different operations that are performed. This can be done by having workers keep track of their time and output for the different tasks. However, one problem many growers encounter when attempting to do this is that there are a large number of tasks that are performed, and this can involve considerable record keeping. For example, in a study I did for the Horticultural Research Institute there were more than 70 different tasks associated with shipping plants from a nursery rewholesale yard.

One method that will help you find the best jobs to mechanize is to analyze each task for the following factors:

1. Repetitiveness. Tasks that are done over and over again are prime candidates for mechanization — for example, container filling, dibbling, transplanting, tagging and watering. For most of these there is a wide selection of equipment available for both large and small operations.

2. Backup in the flow of materials. This is an indication that parts of the system are operating at different rates. A review of the different tasks may require adding more help to a particular task or adjusting the rate that a machine is operating.

3. Labor input. Tasks with significant labor input are ones that should be considered first for mechanization. For example, considerable labor goes into moving plants several times during the growing process. Carts and conveyors are typical devices that can move larger quantities with only minimal labor.

4. Length of the job. The number of days that a particular task is performed can influence your decision on mechanization. Watering is a task that is done almost every day. It should be given high priority when looking at mechanization. Seeding, on the other hand, may be done only a few days during the year. Investing considerable capital into a precision seeder may not be justified.

5. Tasks requiring heavy physical activity. Workers tire quickly when the objects they move are over 50 pounds. Handling materials such as bales of growing mix, bags of fertilizer and larger containers or ball and burlap plants can be mechanized using forklifts, bucket loaders and other lifting devices.

6. Ergonomic activity. Tasks that require repetitive motion of fingers, wrists, elbows, shoulders, neck and back can result in cumulative trauma disorder (CTD) complaints and lost work time. Besides rotating employees between jobs, the use of equipment can reduce the potential for injury.

7. Employee comfort and safety. Because of the large amount of material that is handled over long distances and on wet and rough surfaces, safety for employees should be of major concern. Equipment can be employed that will reduce the risk factor and make working conditions better.

8. Tasks requiring considerable walking. This is one area where considerable savings can be made by applying equipment. Examples include carrying plants long distances, walking to locate materials and locating restroom facilities a significant distance from work areas.

9. Excessive plant injury. Manual handling of plants can often result in plant injuries like broken stems, damaged leaves, and broken flower buds. Equipment, such as carts or conveyors, may help to reduce this loss.

10. Skilled labor doing materials handling tasks. With the large variety of materials handling equipment available today, it is possible to reduce manual handling of many materials. Skilled labor should oversee the materials handling operation and keep everything operating smoothly.

11. Time constraints. The spring season and holidays are usually rush times for growers. There is always more to do that the time allows. Mechanization can help to accomplish more during these periods.

The primary objectives of the automation and mechanization of tasks should be to reduce production costs, increase output, save time and reduce physical effort.

Photos courtesy of Michael's Greenhouses

Mary Beth Martin realized early on that nature makes her happy. Growing up in Connecticut, she spent most of her time “wandering around the woods, climbing trees and finding wildflowers.” Today, Martin gets to share the happiness that plants provide with others, as head grower at Michael’s Greenhouses in Cheshire.

“I’ve always loved flowers and the joy they bring people, and now I get to create that,” says Martin, who has been at Michael’s since 2012. “If I do my job well, we have beautiful product leaving the greenhouse that’s going to give people a big smile and brighten up their whole day.”

Martin didn’t plan on a horticulture career, though. While earning her biology degree at Fairfield University, she took an assortment of courses to explore different areas of the field. Initially, she wanted to study birds, but her advisors steered her toward opportunities in horticulture, and she went on to earn a master’s degree in plant pathology from the University of Massachusetts.

Falling back on her lifelong love of flowers, Martin applied for a growing job at White Flower Farm, and she worked there for a while before having a child. She stayed home with her daughter for 10 years before returning to horticulture, growing for a small begonia greenhouse near her home. She worked there for 10 years, until a growing position opened at Michael’s Greenhouses in 2012.

Since joining Michael’s Greenhouses, her role has grown right along with the operation as the family-owned wholesale grower continues to expand and innovate. Today, she oversees all 10 acres of greenhouse production, while looking for ways to more efficiently produce the high-quality plants her customers expect.

Responding to growth

Initially, Martin managed a rental property spanning about an acre’s worth of greenhouses. After a year, she was promoted to head grower, and her responsibilities quickly expanded as the operation added more space.

“When they offered me the head grower job, there were 3 acres of greenhouses at that point,” she says. “Then they added another 3 acres in 2013, and then another acre and a half a couple years later. Just last year, we added another 2 acres of greenhouse, so it’s been expanding ever since I started.”

As Michael’s enlarges, Martin constantly moves plants around to match crops to the right conditions. “We always put crops in different greenhouses as we add space, and try to pair the environment to what the plant [needs],” she says. “Every greenhouse is different, every crop is different, and every season is different, so everything is a constant variable. You can’t just follow the same instructions every year.”

For example, when Martin started her greenhouse growing career, growers typically sprayed chemicals weekly, “whether plants needed it or not,” she recalls, “because that’s just what you did.” Now, Martin pays close attention to plants and her scouts for potential pest problems, instead of just following a set spray rotation. (Hanging baskets are an exception — since they’re too high to scout for pests, they still get a preventative drench of insecticide.)

Growing more efficiently

As Michael’s Greenhouses grows, the company continually invests in technologies that make operations more efficient.

“We’re always looking for ways to be more sustainable and save labor,” Martin says. New greenhouse structures include energy-saving features like LED lights and heated floors. Automated booms improve watering efficiency and consistency, and Argus environmental controls let Martin and her growers “manipulate the greenhouse environment to reduce problem conditions.”

One of Martin’s responsibilities is tracking the operation’s chemical use for Michael’s MPS (More Profitable Sustainability) certification, which measures environmentally responsible practices in the greenhouse. “Part of my job is making sure that we use the safest chemicals we can,” she says. “I spend a lot of time researching new products that are good for the environment and good for my workers.”

Martin often applies RootShield, an organic biological fungicide, as a “root protection system” during production, which has “reduced our chemical needs for root diseases to almost nothing,” she says. Likewise, she uses DiPel, a biological insecticide, to control caterpillars without adding hazardous re-entry interval windows for her workers. She also uses beneficial bugs to manage pests, including:

To evaluate new chemistries and controls, Martin must balance crop results with cost margins to keep Michael’s Greenhouses growing efficiently. “We’re trying to be as innovative as we can, but we also have to watch our margins,” she says. “If I can look back and say, ‘We produced this beautiful plant, and we did it in a cost-effective manner,’ that’s when I know that we’ve done our job right.”

PHOTO © marcovector | adobe stock

How do you find the next big thing? That is a question I am asked a lot, especially when I am at industry conferences. Unfortunately, none of us are getting the benefit this year of attending industry conferences, where we normally get exposure to new plants, products and consumer trends. Not to mention, missing out on all the in-person networking that helps us connect the dots and generate new business. With so much less live networking going on these days, you are going to have to hone your trend-spotting skills in other ways if you want to keep up with — or get ahead of — the times.

When faced with figuring out how to predict, or at least catch up with, potentially profitable market trends, where should you start?

Ask first

Before good answers always come good questions. Start by drilling down into the overall marketplace and our industry to develop the right questions. What is staying the same with consumers overall and what is staying the same in the green industry? What is changing in both? What do your customers value about our industry and your business? How are current industry trends impacting or changing our values? Use these questions to help you find new paths to profits.

What not to do

Figuring out what to do next may often come from first figuring out what not to do. Pay attention to what is not working — either industry-wide or for you personally. Sometimes it pays off to sit back and wait while brand-new trends take off, to see how quickly they start to fizzle. When you can observe how something is quickly not working as well or selling as well as was anticipated, you might spot an alternative opportunity. What was missing from the plant, product or service in terms of why it did not fulfill customer expectations? Can you move in with a better solution?

Anticipating change

Do you enjoy managing change, or would you rather lead it? Reacting to and managing change is often a chaotic and exhausting endeavor. It can make you feel like you can never catch up. If instead, you work to keep your finger on the pulse of what general consumers — and gardening industry consumers — are doing, using and responding to, you can either create the change you want, or at least lead it. That means paying attention across many different media platforms. A lot of attention. If you do not have marketing staff dedicated to this kind of work, now’s the time to hire on staff or contract out someone to help you.

Accepting change

Yes, there are still quite a few companies in the green industry that have not accepted that a lack of a website and social media presence, or a lackluster website with no e-commerce capabilities, puts them at a severe disadvantage. Clinging to the status quo for dear life just is not a good strategy for business success and growth. When I work on website projects with clients, my motto is “go big or go home.” Meaning, a cheap static website with no commerce capabilities is not going to cut it. If you do not accept how we all — your customers included — live, work, learn, socialize and shop online these days, then your days in business are numbered.

Tempo

The speed at which you either create or adopt a new trend will of course determine your ROI (good or bad). The more proactive you are at keeping up with technology and innovation within your company, the faster on your feet you will be when a big new opportunity presents itself. If you are way behind the times with your technology — be it equipment or digital tools — the more difficult it is to pivot in time.

Trend-spotting tools

Personally, I find that good trendspotting comes naturally from paying attention to a lot of different forms of media. TV commercials, print ads and branded social media content always contain tell-tale indicators for me about items that have garnered mass consumer favor. I often spot common threads through multiple forms of media at the same time. This observation tells me that something has already been identified as a trend by a lot of other expensive marketing companies; they have already done the high-price analysis for you. Whether it is houseplants showing up in the ads, specific colors or styles of decor, they are worth paying attention to.

If you want to do a little digital data mining, then get cozy with Google Trends. This free analytical tool can be found at trends.google.com, where you can input any combination of keywords or phrases to see their relevance in terms of online searches. The results will also provide you with comparisons to related keywords or phrases, and you can of course drill down on your geographical region. I guarantee what you discover will provide you with some surprises and aha moments — as well as some reminders about the constant and ongoing needs of beginner gardeners.

Make the trends

Personally, I am not one who likes to sit back and wait for trends. I prefer to create and drive them. In my opinion, it is not the customer’s job to decide what the next “hot thing” is while we wait around for them ... it is our job. The better we are at proactively producing plants, products, services and content that customers will desire — and the more proactive we are about consumer communications — the more we get to control the conversation.

Your challenge for 2021, if you choose to accept it: Do you want to be a trend-setter, or just a trend-chaser?

Leslie (CPH) owns Halleck Horticultural, LLC, through which she provides horticultural consulting, business and marketing strategy, product development and branding, and content creation for green industry companies. lesliehalleck.com