Hii again it's Jason from Fraser Valley Rose Farm and today i want to answer a question i've
been asked quite a bit recently which is what does a plant business even do during the winter
and of course it's a valid question it's winter on my farm now you might not be able to tell
from the scene behind me because it's been a fairly mild start to the winter
but we have such a seasonal business growing and selling plants there's a high demand early
in the spring season continuing on and peaking in spring but when you get later into summer
sales slow down on most plants you get into autumn which is a great time to plant but
it really hasn't caught on with the buying public and then you've got the whole season of winter
where there's very very little demand for most of your products so what do you do with that and
this obviously the industry has struggled with this for a long time and it's broken into sort
of two camps there's the camp that is along the lines of slow down shut down minimize expenses
and prepare for the next season and then there's the other camp which is diversify your offerings
and use your facilities to pivot into other adjacent businesses and i've got to say a
lot of businesses either exemplify one end of the spectrum or the other and some of them try to do a
little bit of both so i want to use some examples from my own local market here to talk about how
nursery businesses deal with the changing of the seasons and how they adapt to it one good example
of a business that's done exceptionally well with this is Minter Country Garden located in
Chilliwack not too far from here now they have been a staple of their community for decades
but one thing they've done exceptionally well is they tried to make their plant selection relevant
all the way through the year so of course they have an assortment of shrubs and perennials
and annuals that peak in the early spring but they also have a big indoor garden department that
includes tropicals and house plants and succulents and things that would appeal to customers all the
way through the year another thing that they've done is they've built adjacent businesses that
that extend their season things like their floristry department because
you want to give flowers many times if you're not just in the spring they have a produce department
they also have a cafe so it's a wonderful environment and people come into the cafe
all the way through the year their biggest pivot though is to go into christmas so if you hit
their nursery in the christmas time they usually have a christmas train set up they have a light
display a drive-through light display they sell of course the christmas trees and ornaments and decor
so they've done an outstanding job of making their nursery relevant 52 weeks
of year and it makes a lot of sense i mean if you've taken that time and effort and energy
of trying to build a loyal customer base you don't want to disappear on them for a few months of the
year and then try to reacquire them and remind them the following season if you can keep some
amount of visitors flowing to your nursery or garden center or connecting with your business
throughout it makes your job easier another local business that's done a similar thing but
just with the halloween season not the christmas season is Potters - Potter's is another chain
nursery and they have they have lots of hard goods so that helps to smooth out the curve for
them because hard goods in the in the plant business can be sold during the winter for
christmas and so on but then they do a halloween scary house that draws attention during that time
of year as well so it's a great way to extend the season is to move into seasonal products and
the different holiday events so of course those examples were from retail but if you're a plant
grower like me there's still things you can do to try to keep your sales a little more active
during that later part of the season and going into the early part of the next spring things
that will extend your season late into the fall things like echinaceas and fall mums you can look
at for starting early the next season hellebores which you would actually start the previous season
because they're a long cycle crop but you get most of your sales and hellebores in that february to
march kind of range also primulas and violas are cool season early starting plants that can extend
you into that first early part of the season you can certainly force bulbs things like narcissists
that make nice planters over the winter you can push yourself into evergreen boughs or
into colored foliage or colored stems that's another way you can go so things like dogwoods
and eye and and hollies that that you can use as cut stems over the winter so there's lots
of things you can do to try to keep yourself active during that season but i have to admit
it's a bit of an uphill battle and in my case i've decided to take mostly the other approach and just
focus on those things that i can do towards my business in the winter that will benefit me for
the following season so what are those other activities well i mean on roses i do a good
pruning and remove the foliage from my plants so they don't harbor diseases for the following
season but that applies of course to cleaning up all of your growing area cleaning your benches and
getting them ready for the following season i do an installation of irrigation this time of year
usually i add irrigation to one or two beds or to another greenhouse as time allows this is the
time of year that i would go looking for seeds or if i'm buying in bare root roses this is the time
of year that i would secure those numbers and get those orders in it's the time of year where you
have some time to think about how are you going to tag your roses what markets will you attend
how will you set up your online store all those marketing activities that you're actually far too
busy to do in the height of spring when you're also busy growing and taking care of plants
so it is kind of a nice breather and i can see why this approach has such an appeal for
nurserymen because they put in so much effort and so many hours during the peak part of the season
and that's also an expensive time of year this time of year can be when you
lay back a little bit and reduce your expenses you give people some time off if you have a staff
and you can focus in a little bit more on the thinking and planning part of your business
well i guess in summary you can either embrace or try to defy the seasonal nature of
your of your plant business and i'll give you an extreme example of a company that tried to defy it
this is from Edmonton next province over and Hole's garden center took on a big project where
they became Hole's "Enjoy Centre" and they combined their business with a grocery store
a spa a conference center hard goods stores of all sorts of different types almost became like a
a lifestyle mall of that area there to try to extend their season to year round i can't tell
you how it did financially i know they sold out to a real estate company some years back
but it does sort of chafe me in so far as it takes you away from your roots as a plant business and
by the time i visited it last time there it really didn't resemble that much of a plant
business at all it was really more of a restaurant food service spa type business as far as as the
feel of it was to me so take that for what you want um i'll i'll leave that topic right there
thank you so much for watching about what plant is businesses should or or can do over the winter if
you have any questions or especially if you have any suggestions about what small plant businesses
should do over the winter i would appreciate that in the comments of the video thanks so much