Located in East Concord, New York, Waterman’s Greenhouse has been in business for more than 30 years. Greg, Donna and Ethan Waterman have evolved a small garden center into a successful 40,000 square-foot retail garden center. Half of our space is covered greenhouses, with outdoor areas for perennials and mums.

Waterman’s Greenhouse has partnered with Eckert’s Greenhouse for more than seven years. We love and highly recommend all of the H2O Labor Saver Hanging Baskets. In front of our greenhouse, we have 10 28” Wrap Around containers and 30 23” Labor Savers displayed in Flower Towers. Waterman’s Greenhouse supplies more than 10 municipalities in the surrounding areas with their hanging baskets and combination planters. These are all planted in Eckert’s Greenhouse’s 23” Labor Savers. We highly recommend these containers because of their durability and their ability to reduce watering times, plus the risk of a basket suffering from underwatering is greatly reduced. The 23” Labor Savers are the perfect size for many main streets. They bring a sense of grandeur and style to an ordinary space.

The Eckert’s team is always very friendly and helpful. The entire team is very knowledgeable, not only about their products but also regarding which plant materials will thrive in their H2O Labor Saver baskets.

One of the top reasons we love Eckert’s Greenhouse hanging baskets is because they are reusable. This wouldn’t be possible without the high quality and durable material the containers are created with. Waterman’s Greenhouse strives to be an eco-friendly agribusiness and we are taking initiatives to support sustainable farming practices. In early 2020, during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, solar power was installed to help reduce our energy consumption rate. In our hemp fields, we use biodegradable plastic to help stabilize the roots, preserve nutrients and improve the stable development of the plants. Drip irrigation waters our fields and is the most efficient water and nutrient delivery system.

In our covered greenhouses, we supply our customers with the 16” Weekenders. Not only do the Weekenders retain water to help reduce everyday watering, but the containers are also reusable year after year.

Waterman’s Greenhouse is dedicated to reducing the use of single-use plastics in agribusiness. Our customers purchase the planted 16” Weekenders in the spring and bring them back in the fall after the growing season has finished. We offer custom replanting with our H2O Labor Saver Hanging Baskets. Our customers appreciate the versatility of the containers year after year.

Here at Waterman’s Greenhouse, we can’t say enough great things about Eckert’s Greenhouse and their H2O Labor Saver hanging baskets. We personally use all three sizes in our displays, our municipalities and with our customers.

More often than not, the phrase ‘holiday plant’ still means poinsettia. Come October, November and December, shelves at independent garden centers are stocked with poinsettias, primarily in traditional red with more colors being added over time.

“We haven’t seen anything of significance rise to replace it,” says Plantpeddler owner Mike Gooder. “And I think in the consumer’s eye, the poinsettia is the plant for Christmas.”

There are changes in the market, however. There is no replacing the poinsettia, but changes are occurring and developing on the margins. For one, more colors — whites, greens, oranges and more — are being bred and trialed, and then reaching consumers. Poinsettia growing season is changing too, with the hope that poinsettias can be sold in early fall and after Christmas in colors that fit those times of year.

“They are getting harder and harder to sell,” says Nicole Bent, president of Shelmerdine Garden Centre (No. 75 on the 2021 Top 100 Independent Garden Centers List) in Winnipeg, Manitoba. “I look at them as a commodity plant that you can find in any big-box store — Walmart, Safeway, wherever. It’s harder for the garden center to sell them without making them look like something above and beyond what is available at a big-box store.”

New ways to merchandise

According to Bent, one of the steps Shelmerdine has taken in recent years is to begin “dressing up” poinsettias more.

“We have gravitated to using better pot covers and using glitter to make them look like the special plant they are,” she says. “You have to watch your pricing too because when you can buy a poinsettia at Walmart for $9.99, why would you spend $14.99 at a garden center?”

Pricing she says, has to be monitored carefully as to not be too far out of line with what customers can buy at a competitor, even if what Shelmerdine offers is more unique.

Bent adds that, in recent years, the business has started to diversify what it offers around the holiday season. One project they’ve focused on is amaryllis bulbs — a trend they found was successful in Europe — and are hoping will translate to North America over time. The hope is that if the IGC is losing market share on poinsettias to big-box stores, offering amaryllis bulbs will help replace lost revenue.

“It hasn’t totally hit yet, but we think it will get bigger in the next few years,” Bent says. “One thing we really think will help is the wax bulbs that have been introduced over the last several years. It’s basically an amaryllis bulb that has been dipped in wax. Everything the plant needs to live is in that wax cover, so the bulb just grows. You can decorate around it, put it on a plate to showcase it and the flower just continues to grow and bloom.”

The only downside, Bent says, is that the wax-covered bulb will die after the holiday season ends unlike traditional amaryllis bulbs that can be saved and re-grown year after year.

“We did notice in 2019, the first year that we sold wax bulbs, that people just didn’t get it,” Bent says. “But last year, even with COVID and online ordering, they were totally sold out.”

As for poinsettias, Bent estimates that Shelmerdine produces around 10,000 poinsettias per year with 9,000 allotted for fundraising programs and the remaining 1,000 sold in store. That split has been consistent for the last 15 to 20 years.

In-store poinsettias sales are 75% red, 15% white and the remaining 10% a mix of “novelty” colors like pinks and burgundies.

Shelmerdine uses unique wraps to differentiate from the more standard design available at larger retailers. Smaller alternatives like Princettia and poinsettia trees have gained some steam, but have not made nearly the impact that poinsettias do on the bottom line.

“We also would have a hard time making a profit without the volume of the fundraising program,” Bent says. “And with new items, we have to keep looking for the next thing.”

Trialed improvements

At Cresco, Iowa-based Plantpeddler, Gooder and his team operate one of the biggest poinsettia trials in the United States. Over the past several years, he says poinsettia genetics available from breeders has improved greatly.

“Poinsettias can be a difficult crop to grow,” he says. “But in the last three to five years, a number of important enhancements have been made. People say ‘Oh, the poinsettia has plateaued,’ but that could not be farther from the truth.”

Gooder is seeing important incremental breeding improvements. “One of the things breeders are working on is early ‘blushing’ but late flowering,” he says.

The idea, he says, is that in the past, some varieties wouldn’t be ready to ship when the bracts began opening up, but the color wasn’t right. With new breeding, the plant won’t fully open up as early. “This means we can ship over a longer window,” Gooder says. “Instead of having varieties to gap multiple weeks, they can cover multiple weeks by picking [better genetics].”

Branching characteristics have improved too, he says, noting that branching has become more uniform.

The impact of color

According to Gooder, the biggest advancement in recent years has been in white poinsettias. Before, many of the poinsettias were what he calls a “dirty white.” Now what’s available is often brighter and features more of the clean, white look customers prefer.

Red, however, still remains king. Chris Berg, senior product manager at Dümmen Orange, says red remains the most common color in every breeder’s portfolio.

Dümmen, Berg says, also divides its poinsettia catalogue into different seasons. Reds, he says, primarily play for Christmas, with greens and oranges hitting the market aimed at fall consumers who aren’t looking for a Christmas plant just yet.

“It’s looking at the retail partners we have and looking into how we can tap into what they are doing and pushing,” he says. For Dümmen, breeding work occurs in Ecke, California, where Breeding Manager Ruth Kobayashi oversees efforts to bring new options to market.

“It’s a funny candy shop and there’s so much there to work with,” Berg says. “So we can go in there, see what’s available and match it with what’s been popular as far as holiday décor goes. From there, we can start working and sometimes fast track varieties that we think can make an impact for us.”

In Plantpeddler’s trials, Gooder notes that the best varieties available aren’t just coming from the biggest breeders in the industry.

“There are really great selections right now from every major breeder and every minor breeder,” he says. “Steve Rinehart, a new player who came from Ecke, has a few whites that we absolutely love. If you go program by program, there’s great stuff from Selecta, Syngenta, Beekenkamp, the Dümmen Orange program or Lazzeri, the new Italian breeder.”

“Gerbera ‘Red Glitter’ is the best glitter type, the best Jingle type, on the market in my opinion. It’s from Lazzeri, a new player. Those competitive dynamics help improve everybody’s game,” Gooder adds.

Extending the holidays

According to Berg, the biggest step forward for poinsettias is not so much increasing sales around Christmas and doubling down and what has been done already. It’s not even Princettia varieties or poinsettia trees. Instead, the idea is to expand the season over time with new genetics and new colors.

For example, this could mean developing more whites that fit the tone of traditional New Year’s décor vs. the reds of Christmas.

“For instance, the Ecke company was trying to develop that fall crop for years. And in some cases that has gotten really strong,” Berg says. “And we will see if we can extend into the New Year.”

At Shelmerdine, Bent says the holiday season has evolved over time for the business, with décor, ornaments and other items available at the garden center becoming more popular during the holidays. In recent years, she says that there has also been an interest in tropicals and succulents being given as gifts versus a poinsettia.

“But I don’t think we’d feel like a Christmas store — or that it would feel like Christmas — without us having poinsettias,” she says. “And we take a lot of pride in growing them in-house. It’s not a bread-and-butter crop like an annual, but this bridges us throughout the winter and allows us to keep people employed and our grower busy.”

Gooder, meanwhile, says that Plantpeddler will produce about 1.75 million poinsettias for the upcoming holiday season. Princettias and other novelties are showing good growth as well. Painted poinsettias and other novelties are around, but poinsettias still lead the way. He expects that to continue.

“For a crop that a lot of people say doesn’t make any sense and doesn’t make any money, there’s been a lot of money and time spent in breeding efforts to improve the product,” he says.

The author is associate editor of sister publication Greenhouse Management magazine.

We all know that when it comes to retail staff, scheduling can make you or break you. During the holidays, which are already particularly stressful for us all, keeping customers and employees happy with your staff schedules can get tricky. If you are the one tasked with creating your staff schedules, you’ve probably begrudgingly accepted that there’s no way to make everyone happy and still meet customer expectations. It can feel like a never-ending, unwinnable game of checkers.

Even so, with pressures on the service industry and retail staff at a seemingly all-time high — and new recruits hard to find — I would suggest that taking care of the staff you have is a top priority this holiday season. The pandemic has been tough on all of us, especially consumer-facing service workers. Our garden center retail staff falls squarely into that category, and I suspect they feel pretty worn out. Getting a break on holidays and the ability, if they can, to spend a little extra time with family this year is probably in order.

How do you manage when everyone wants time off at the same time? In my experience our industry, and many others, tend to defer to tenure when deciding who “has to work” the holiday. New employees get stuck with working the holidays or the holiday eves. I’m not sure this is a great strategy for indoctrinating new staff into your company culture or retaining them once you’ve invested the time and resources to do so. Plus, you may have existing long-term staff who would rather work holiday shifts for alternative comp time.

In fact, I think comp time might be one of the best things you can offer your staff when they make concessions to work holidays or the shifts on the shoulder days around those holidays. I’m sure you are probably already offering paid holidays and trade-out paid holidays for those who work your holiday shifts. But what if you offered extra paid comp days for those who volunteer to work the less popular holiday slots? Work Christmas Eve? Get two paid comp holidays instead of one or perhaps some extra holiday bonus cash. Be creative with your incentives but make them meaningful. Also, don’t put too tight a timeline on when staff can use their comp days — give them a year to use them.

Encourage volunteers

Self-scheduling is one staffing concept that could help alleviate scheduling stresses in the retail and service industry. Self-scheduling sounds great, but inevitably you end up with shifts going uncovered. However, if you adequately incentivize your staff to volunteer to work times that are traditionally tough for you to schedule, it’s a win/win for everyone. Be sure to make holiday shift incentives clear to staff well in advance of when you need them to work and make signing up for holiday shifts, and asking off for a holiday, required farther in advance than your normal vacation notice period.

Blackout dates might be necessary at times, but I’d recommend keeping them to a minimum. The fact that most green industry employees are prohibited from taking any vacation for the entire spring season (or summer — whenever you have your peak season) makes working holidays even more distasteful. Before I left to run my own company, I’d spent 20+ years working my tail off all year long, but I couldn’t use any of my hard-earned vacation days (be they oh so few) from February or March through May. Not to mention I typically worked six to seven days a week every spring. I was utterly exhausted. I never got enough vacation during the year and I missed many beautiful spring seasons in my own garden and for traveling. So do your employees. It’s not good. If you put the same vacation restrictions on your staff over holidays, you are risking not having any skilled staff at all.

Consider closing

When it comes to any given holiday, or its shoulder days, I think a valid question is: Do you really need to be open at all? What are you really gaining from staying open, especially if traffic is historically low? You could be losing more in terms of staff morale than you’re gaining in sales. Ultimately, that decision comes down to analyzing your sales and traffic history for those days over the last several years and aligning it with your brand identity and local market expectations.

If you’re an IGC that historically does increased business during the Thanksgiving or Christmas holidays and your sales and foot traffic history for the last few years support this trend, then staying open and staffed may be necessary. But if your sales and traffic history for traditional holidays just isn’t there, you might be wasting resources. Are those two or three last-minute stragglers who come in on Christmas Eve to buy a “clearance” tree making you money? Or are they going to cost you good employees?

Innovative holiday incentives aren’t only for your employees; they are also for your customers. Want to close your doors on a holiday you’ve traditionally been open? Incentivize your customers to place online orders on days the shop is closed to get a special discount or bonus plant material with their order. Or double their customer loyalty reward points earned for online orders placed on days your shop is closed. You get the gist. This could be a terrific way to maintain sales and “foot traffic” without having to staff at all. Plus, it provides you with new marketing opportunities.

When you rely on humans to staff your garden center, you’ll need to inject some humanity and compassion into your scheduling practices. Think about what you can give so your staff can give back. ‘Tis the season after all!

As COVID-19 ushered in new customers and IGCs were up against issues like thinning plant inventory and staffing shortages, overall security checks or drills may have fallen by the wayside. As garden centers settle into the fall months, it’s the perfect time to rethink security strategies and make new room for improvements.

BY THE NUMBERS

According to the National Retail Federation’s 2021 Retail Security Survey, 69.4% of respondents reported that the pandemic “resulted in an increase in overall risk to their organizations.” The report also highlighted the fact that criminals had more opportunity to swipe products due to multichannel sales, such as buying online or in-store pick-up.

Per the report, 18% of respondents said they experienced a “slight or significant reduction in threats over the past year,” likely due to decreased foot traffic from COVID-19 safety measures. The report also stated that employee theft was the largest area of reduction, and nearly 30% of respondents also reported that shoplifting was also a reduced threat.

While these numbers might seem good news, retailers should have their guard up: According to the report, 38.9% of those surveyed experienced the most significant increase in fraud from multichannel sales, compared to just 18.8% in 2020 — almost double. The NRF report also discovered that 53% of retailers are allocating additional technology resources to safeguard their operations.

While crime is relatively low in the industry, it can — and does — happen.

PLANT AND PRODUCT THEFT

• Theft usually occurs after hours.
• Theft happens on a large scale, and usually thieves are prepared with trucks, other vehicles or and have access to an easy escape route.
• Big-ticket items like shrubs, statuary items or large containers are usually targeted by thieves.

Shoplifting and plant theft seldom happen during operating hours, says Tom Richey, claims manager at Hortica, a brand of Sentry Insurance.

“As far as shoplifting products in a store, we don’t see a lot of that, claims-wise. We see a lot of theft from products in stores after hours,” he says.

Jay Mitchell, manager at Mitchell’s Nursery & Greenhouse in King, North Carolina, can attest to this, as his family’s business experienced theft and repeated attempts that started in the spring of 2016. One particular customer came by twice a year, usually during the busier times, such as the nursery’s spring open house. Sometimes the man showed up with his family members, but he usually showed up alone.

According to Mitchell, the man bought a bag of dirt or hanging basket at most, but he lingered around the store for two or three hours.

“He asked a lot of questions about what we were growing and how things were going,” Mitchell recalls. “His dad used to have a greenhouse.”

On the night after the open house, police spotted two men on the side of the road by the nursery’s irrigation pond who claimed their van had broken down. Police arrested one of the men, as there had been a previous warrant out for his arrest. The other went on his way, and all of this occurred unbeknownst to Mitchell.

The morning after that incident, Mitchell discovered that nearly $1,200 worth of geraniums were missing. He found some of them scattered in a gully near the woods behind the nursery, and amongst them found a wax-coated box that linked the name of the man’s business on it — a giveaway as to who was behind the theft. Mitchell also found a homemade stretcher device used to transport plants.

He estimates the stretcher required two people to maneuver it, and says it could probably hold about 80 6.5-inch geraniums at a time, along with four hanging baskets. He also says the thieves likely entered the nursery through the woods from the road that led to the building, as it was an easy access point.

Mitchell thinks that because the path through the woods was so rocky, one of the men fell and sustained injuries, and couldn’t continue on, leading to the discovery of plants in the woods.

“We called the sheriff’s department and they said, ‘Well, that’s odd. We just arrested him the night before over at your pond.’”

However, they couldn’t prove or disprove that the suspect had stolen from the nursery because the man claimed that he and his family had bought the plants the week before. At the time, Mitchell’s Nursery & Greenhouse provided customers with handwritten receipts and didn’t have a POS system to track purchases.

“We could not deny that they had bought anything from us, but the bulk of it was gone. They had a box truck with a company name on the side of it, so the detective was pretty sure that they were going out and peddling our stuff (and possibly plants from other nurseries) to hardware stores and other businesses out of their box truck, acting like they grew it,” Mitchell says.

While petty plant or product theft can occur in broad daylight with lower or moderately priced items, Richey says they don’t often receive claims for smaller items from their insured. Instead, it happens on a larger scale.

“What we see shoplifted are your big-ticket items and equipment, after-hours. This is where people are loading them up on vehicles. Things like shrubs, larger containers or statuary items are the things that are being stolen from garden centers. Most of it is probably left out in the open, and unless they’re well secured, they can be taken pretty quickly,” Richey says.

PREVENTION

• Install video or dummy cameras, security signage, motion sensor alarms, padlocks or extra lighting.
• Open up the front of the store so you can easily monitor who enters in and out.

To prevent loss and theft, Zach Bruce, safety services manager at Hortica, says it’s essential to have a plan in place for when such incidents occur. For example, if theft occurs, garden centers should first file a police report.

“They should let law enforcement know the issues they’re having and see if they’re able to drive by on a more regular basis. Generally, if they go down and they steal something one night and they easily get away with that, then there’s a good chance that they’re likely going to go back and try it again,” Bruce says.

Garden centers should install motion-sensor security lighting and video cameras in-store and outdoor, Bruce says. For video cameras, attention is critical: think quality image and broad coverage. Dummy cameras or security signage are always good to have to dissuade any potential thieves as well.

Many security cameras have multiple options when setting up, and businesses can either outsource monitoring/installation or do everything in-house. Whatever the company decides, it should get as much coverage as possible, and should focus on any entryway points into the store, Bruce says.

He also recommends securing any parking lot gates with a heavy-duty lock, which is another easy way to stop potential thieves in their tracks.

“The other thing that we’ve typically recommended is to open up the front and try to make it so that people can’t easily be undercover. You want to easily monitor who enters the property,” Bruce says.

TAKING MEASURES

After the theft incident, Mitchell installed alarms on the greenhouse doors and trip-motion laser beam sensors. The company also installed video cameras in the main greenhouse and the nursery’s parking lot.

“There’s not a good way to lock up a greenhouse because people could just slice through the plastic. The greenhouse and growing areas are on 5-6 acres, so it would’ve been really expensive to put a security fence up. Video surveillance and the alarms system seemed to be the cheapest route to go,” Mitchell says.

Mitchell notes that the man’s family came back to the store during opening hours three times since the primary incident, and he made it clear that none of them were welcome and had to leave. However, Mitchell says shortly after, the prowlers came back one night — likely attempting to steal poinsettias in the greenhouse. He thinks it was the same family involved in the initial theft.

“I don’t think they realized that we had put alarms in the greenhouse because after they got in the greenhouse, the alarm went off and they left,” Mitchell says.

Unfortunately, their heads were down, and they were wearing hats so that the police couldn’t make an arrest, but the alarm was enough to scare them off before they could swipe anything. While combing through security footage, Mitchell discovered that the men had visited prior during business hours, and he could tell they were scoping out camera locations.

“Looking back, they probably had been doing it for three to five years because they would come in on our open houses or the Saturday before Mother’s Day — our busiest days — just wandering around. And it’s just so chaotic that when you come in those next mornings, you don’t notice when there’s plants missing,” he says.

Mitchell realized the two men had picked six geraniums off of different benches little by little throughout the greenhouse to avoid arousing suspicion. And because the nursery grows nearly 12,000 geraniums, the thieves could quickly get away with stealing a couple hundred of them, Mitchell says.

The men were never formally charged due to lack of concrete evidence, but the garden center hasn’t had any issues since installing those security measures.

THE NEXT WAVE OF CRIME

One of the most significant emerging threats to businesses right now is cybercrime, and even garden centers can become a target for hackers. Stolen information is a substantial loss for their insured, Richey says — and the losses are larger than what they’re losing in stolen plants.

“The biggest thing that we’re seeing is that people are keeping information they don’t need to be keeping, they need to discard old or outdated information so there aren’t more ways for these crimes to take place,” Richey says.

Stolen information can result in the loss of millions of dollars, so it’s crucial to discard outdated information securely.

Many businesses reuse simple passwords or lack follow-through on virus software updates. As a result, Richey says they aren’t aware of the issue until it’s too late and experience $3-4 million ransomware losses. Protecting account information is vital because cybercriminals can hack into payment systems and grab names, addresses and credit cards. A common issue Richey sees is cybercriminals posing as known vendors submitting a “notice” for past-due payments and letting the business know they can pay via credit card.

“These crimes happen more than you would believe, so there’s got to be a protection policy in place with every company, every organization. You’ve got to be able to manage and educate your employees on how to recognize and prevent cyberattacks,” Richey says.