Once the weather begins to warm, I start looking for signs of shrubs and trees that are beginning to bloom. Two of my favorite early spring bloomers are Cercis and Fothergilla. The pink haze on the Cercis branches and the white cloud of bottle brush flowers on Fothergilla are two of the earliest ...
Soil preparation. That’s the starting point for any field production nursery operation. The soil you've got and what you do with it to maintain or improve soil health is directly tied to your success as a grower. It is the key to growing consistently high value plant material.
The making of a really valuable nursery plant is pretty much hard wired into every detail of the growing process from selecting liners through harvesting. All these activities are tied to an exacting timeline and it begins with the grower’s approach to developing a strategic planting plan for ...
Should field production growers invest in mycorrhizal inoculation materials in hopes of achieving improved tree and shrub growth in the nursery? We believe it's important to explore ways to continuously improve processes with the goal of turning out better plant ...
After you spend days picking out the perfect nursery plants for your landscape project, the last thing you want to worry about is delivery. Perhaps you’ve experienced that unpleasant surprise once or twice–that plants ...
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Plant of the Month
Solving Plant Shortages in a High-Demand Landscaping Market
As a landscaper, you want to know as much as you can about the expected hardiness and survival rate of plants you install. When you place an order for landscaping trees, you want to know that they are solid—that they were grown not just to make a good first impression, but to ...
Some nurseries specialize in container growing or a mix of container and field grown. Others devote their efforts exclusively to field production of their trees and shrubs. You might choose one over the other depending on the customer or project you are purchasing for.
As a landscaping professional you are always on the lookout for the next new source of wholesale plants. You want growers who can deliver the high caliber wholesale plants you need when you need them. How should you make choices about the nurseries you decide to work with? There is no substitute ...
Is there a connection between root ball size and the quality of the landscape trees and shrubs it supports? We say yes.
Many things must go right to ensure that a rooted cutting or graft grows into a robust nursery tree or shrub in the field. Above all, planting depth at the nursery (and later when the tree is installed in a landscape) is critical because it determines whether the root flare will develop above ...
As a buyer looking at that finished plant in a re-wholesale yard, you can’t possibly know everything that went into producing it–much less the plant propagation and planting techniques employed. If you like it, you like it. If you don’t, you don’t. Much of the transaction is instinctive. But the ...
In an ideal world, you’d have your go-to wholesale nursery where you would pick up everything you need all in one shot. That, sorry to say, is not the world we live in. And that’s why we have rewholesale distributors. Rewholesalers have to become experts at choosing growers based on their ...
Make Sure Your Fixed Budget Planting Plan Is Based on Accurate Pricing Our job has been booked and the planting plan is set. We have to make it work with the budget we have. Can you help us? Whoops! “Winging it” may sometimes be necessary ...
The plants you use the most are getting harder to find each year, right? Those “go-to” cultivars always seem to be sold out before you can get them.
We all know there is enormous variety in the plant world. Yet when you are having trouble locating the cultivars you use the most, the ones most requested by your customers, you might feel like you are out of options. You are not. Breeders all over the world continue to develop new and ...
2 min read
Investing in "Deer Resistant" Shrubs & Trees
Throw a few venison burgers on the grill, because this business has driven the thought of deer as anything but a nuisance out of my head long ago. Deer are a problem that keeps coming back for more and in greater numbers after each breeding season. Solutions are a challenge since “deer resistant ...
This is a business where patience is a hard-won virtue. Some days I’m more virtuous than others. But I do know that when it comes to delivering plants that are truly ready for market, timing -and therefore patience- is everything.
Salt is great for curing ham, but it does not cure much when it comes to your landscape -- quite the opposite. Most plants can't handle it. Fortunately for landscapers, there are some salt tolerant plants. And they belong to a small but tenacious minority in the plant world.
Brilliant clusters of holly berries nestled among those deep green leaves on a holly shrub - it’s an iconic part of a winter landscape that I really enjoy. There are different holly categories, but the popular
More and more customers, from individual homeowners to landscaping companies to property management teams, are looking for native plants for their landscaping projects. On this subject I find the need for a nuanced approach, because there are native plants, and then there are cultivated native ...
Boxwood is versatile and useful, but some in the landscape industry are afraid to use it because of the recent scares around boxwood blight. Your customers may have questions about boxwood, or they may just be ordering what they think of as alternatives. Alternatives are out there, but there is ...
For any plant to thrive, it needs oxygen and soil moisture--but also decent drainage. Some plants can tolerate a poorly drained, sopping wet site better than others. Some can even tolerate short term flooding--but not constant submersion. Most plants won’t survive if they are just sitting in ...
Customers are VERY interested in how different shrubs and trees tolerate sun or shade once they are installed in a landscape. They may be particularly interested after a bad experience with a plant that burned up in the sunlight or failed to thrive in too much shade. We all know that most plants ...
