Published: March 29, 2007 09:55 pm            

Area nurseries ready for spring

ASHLAND — The redbuds and dogwoods are blooming, the first green leaves are peeking out of the trees and, before you know it, homeowners will be peeking out their doors and thinking about lawnwork.

Nurseries and garden centers are ready.

People are just ready to get out and dig in the dirt, said David Johnson, who with his wife Pam owns Johnson’s Nursery & Garden Center in Rush.

The warm sunny days bring them out to walk up and down the rows of saplings and shrubs.

The year’s business depends on preparing for spring, Johnson said.

“It’s like Christmas. This is our season,” he said.

The Johnsons grow most of their trees and some of the nursery plants, but they also ship in some stock from Oregon and other points west, he said.

It’s a brief season and an essential one, said Kenneth Imel, owner of Imel’s Greenhouse & Supply in Greenup. “We probably do 75 to 80 percent of our business in the spring,” he said.

Gardeners want to get their planting done during the rainy weeks early in the season so they’ll be established by the time the rains dry up, he said.

The season generally starts around the beginning of April and runs until mid-June. Imel estimates that during that time he’ll work 16 to 18 hours a day.

The real crunch comes on weekends, especially sunny ones. Eager gardeners start shopping on Friday to get a jump start on planting.

Monday can be a busy day, too, the Johnsons said. They’re not sure why. Maybe weekend shoppers see what they want on a Saturday or Sunday and return Monday to pick it up, they speculated.

Weather is a crucial business component. A sunny weekend can mean great sales. When it rains the shoppers stay home.

“If you lose a Saturday or Sunday due to rain, you never get it back,” Johnson said.

Like Christmas, in which merchants know by their Black Friday sales whether they’ll have a good season, the barometer for the planting season is Mother’s Day, Pam Johnson said.

It’s usually the busiest and most important weekend.

Imel agrees that the Mother’s Day weekend will define his bottom line for the year. But he’s already expecting a good year, just based on the state of the economy.

Paradoxically, a sluggish economy can auger well for the garden industry, because people spend more time at home working around the house, he said.

Nursery owners place their orders back in the summer or fall based on experience and trends. Some species, like ferns, petunias, impatiens, marigolds, snapdragons and geraniums, are perennially good sellers, Imel said.

Other varieties are prone to trends. For instance, holly and boxwood are among the best-selling evergreens these days, compared to the junipers that were popular several years back, the Johnsons said.

The reason may be low maintenance, they explained. Also, today’s gardeners want more color, “lots of color,” Pat Johnson said. Dogwoods, for instance, are among their best-selling trees.

Independent garden centers lose sales to big-box discount stores and have to tailor their services accordingly.

There are some who will take their business to big box stores, but independents offer better quality and service, Pam Johnson said.

“People come in complaining to me that the big box stores won’t help them,” she said. “We can help solve problems.”

In the case of Wheeler’s Garden Center in Flatwoods, big-box competition means shutting down the retail side and concentrating on landscaping services, according to owner Mike Wheeler. “It’s hard to compete with them.”

On the other hand, Wheeler said he’ll have an idea by the first week of April whether his season will be a good one.

MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or at (606) 326-2652.

        

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