RE: Mail Order Nurseries

Ya know after reading many comments.....

Wondering if the actual growers are like farmers.... they get min dollar
amounts, then this one adds a cost, then that one.... 

Hum... no wonder so little new and exciting stuff comes out, they can't
afford to take a risk.

IMHO, but could be really wrong here....
Donna

> 
> I think you're right about most nurseries buying stuff to re-sell.
> Maybe all of them do to a certain extent, if you include contract
> growers among the suppliers. The nursery I work for probably buys  at
> least 75 percent of what it sells in landscapes and retail sales.
> 
> There are a couple of reasons for this--one, even with 140+ acres, we
> don't have enough room to grow everything we need, and two, not
> everyone is good at growing everything. So we concentrate on growing
> the things we're good at [a dozen kinds of palms, live oaks, ligustrum
> trees, and a very few other things]. We also do a brisk wholesale
> business in the stuff we grow.
> 
> The business philosophy here has always been one of "growing for the
> future," so we don't grow a lot of tomorrow's sales [small container
> plants]. As a rule, we grow the big-bucks stuff and the high-demand
> stuff.
> 
> The counties in this area all require a certain number of 30-gallon
> water-thrifty trees in every new landscape. The number required
depends
> on the size of the property. One of the more popular "permitted" trees
> is the live oak [Q. virginiana], so we grow lots of them. At any given
> time, we've got close to a thousand of them ready to go into the
ground.
> 
> We also have business relationships with others where we tend to the
> growing of, say, coconut palms on their "plantation." They get a tax
> write-off and we get an inexpensive source of somewhat expensive
> plants. At some point, a successful nursery--mail order or not--has
got
> to face the expansion issue. I would guess that contract growers is
the
> best option for most.

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