It’s Time for Sharing
If you have read the Free State News lately, you may recognize that this is my fourth or fifth article. I did not volunteer to do this, but to be clear, I am happy to do it. Initially, George Mayo asked me if I could write an article. Then, Nancy Akehurst asked me if I would write another article and consider writing on a regular basis. With all that Nancy has been through recently, I am not going to be the one who tells her no. So I continue to write.
This time, I want to encourage more of you to share your experiences.
I am a relative “babe in the woods” when it comes to the nursery industry. Some of you are second, third, maybe even fourth generation. You have a lot to share.
When I committed to enter the nursery business, I invested over $1,500 in books. The library continues to grow. I read and read until I couldn’t stand it any more. The books were and are a great resource. However, the real learning has come from visiting other nurseries, learning from those who have gone before me, and doing it myself. I have visited over one hundred nurseries from Europe to Oregon and in between. I have literally plowed down mistakes and abandoned my first nursery site due to poor growing conditions. My learning curve has been expensive and time consuming. I am not sure how it would have been easier other than to work for another grower for several years.
What’s my point? We all have different experiences and should feel an obligation to share the knowledge. I wish I could buy a book with everyone’s experiences. Our Maryland nursery industry has great breadth of diversity and a very long history. Folks were operating nurseries in Maryland before settlers began heading west on the Oregon trail.
In my former life, I owned Hydro Lawn, a regional chemical lawn service company. We had 17 branch offices scattered throughout New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. I started in 1973 and every day was an adventure. We did not have any mentors in what was a brand new residential service business. For six years, I looked at every other service business to model a successful business. In 1979, a group of us decided to form a national trade association, Professional Lawn Care Association of America (PLCAA), so that we could, at minimum, get together from time to time to share war stories. PLCAA took off and became a wildly successful organization. More importantly, I developed dozens of life-long friendships. Out of the new friends, some of us eventually formed a peer group that met four times a year. We made it a working vacation, traveling to the Homestead Resort in Virginia, Montreal, Cape Cod, Mexico, Florida, Oregon and even Cleveland. We had an agenda for each meeting. Actually, our group was sort of “clubby” in that we thought long and hard before inviting a new member to join us. This was okay because we shared the most intimate details about our businesses and personal lives with each other. We needed to be confident in the group’s ability to keep our business private.
I describe the above because that group presented us with powerful opportunities to learn, experiment and prosper. We all came to look forward to the meetings to explore new ideas and to learn from each other. That was the key, to learn from each other.
A special group is not needed to learn from each other. The Free State News and all that MNLA does for each of us gives us the same opportunity. I love to read Stanton Gill’s treatises on bug control, but I would also love to know more about planting, pruning, staking, harvesting, holding plants, shipping, and the costs associated with doing all those things. I would like to know someone else’s experience in growing Stewartia, Fagus, Japanese maple cultivars, Aesculus, Asimia, Buxus and a hundred more genuses (does anyone actually know how to spell the plural of genus? [Editor: genera]). I would like to know about your experience with H-2A and H-2B. I would like to know what a landscape contractor or garden center is looking for when they buy my plants. I would like to know if anyone is getting rich in this business. I would like to know more about someone’s experience using the Internet as a marketing tool.
What I really want to know is everything all of you know. Yes, I can call someone and ask questions. I know I will get good information. But, if I did that then only I would be the one getting the good information that at least a hundred other folks would like to have. Writing, talking and demonstrating are the only ways we have to communicate. The Free State News is our single greatest opportunity to share in a written forum.
So, let’s start writing. Everyone can come up with several topics in a matter of minutes. Think not? Do you graft, root cuttings, grow containers, prune trees, plant trees, buy tractors and specialized equipment, advertise, sell, collect “slow pays,” irrigate or apply chemicals? Have you discovered substantial productivity gains? And the list goes on. Everyone has a story worth telling. Don’t assume we have heard your experiences.
Jerry