Toil in the Soil: Running
A Garden-Related Biz

After 16 years as a big-company chief executive officer, Walt Minnick didn't like the idea of working for someone else. The former top executive of TJ International, a building-products manufacturer now owned by Weyerhaeuser Co., also didn't want to leave Boise, Idaho. What he wanted was to fish and hike in the Rocky Mountains, and indulge his love of gardening.

"I thought there might be an opportunity to run a company, not move from Boise, and combine my gardening interests and make a little money in the process," says Mr. Minnick. Research by a security-analyst friend at an investment house suggested the fragmented retail gardening-supply business perhaps offered opportunity. After identifying a small chain of garden centers owned by a retail conglomerate, Mr. Minnick raised $17 million from friends and family and purchased the business in 1998.

Now chairman and CEO of closely held SummerWinds Garden Centers Inc., Mr. Minnick says he earns less than a quarter of what he did running a public company and, like most CEOs, he spends more time managing than enjoying plants and planting. Still, he makes a point of spending a day or two now and then working in each of the stores. "I spend a lot of time watering," he says.

Retail sales for gardening supplies and products totaled $36.8 billion in 2004, according to the National Gardening Association. Outlays for services, including landscape design and lawn care, totaled $28.9 billion in 2003, according to the American Nursery & Landscape Association.

The business is, indeed, fragmented. To begin with, there are numerous types of businesses, from individual landscape architects and one-person lawn-mowing services to growers of plants and a variety of manufacturers, distributors and retailers of products from seeds to sprinklers. No category-killer store dominates the retail field, although Home Depot is a major player, and none of the service providers has overriding market share, either.

Gardening-related businesses are popular lifestyle ventures. A quarter of landscape architects are self-employed, and the typical gardening retail store employs just seven people, barely more than half the dozen employees who work at a typical retail establishment. "A lot of people have gotten into the gardening business because they personally love gardening," says Bruce Butterfield, research director of the National Gardening Association in South Burlington, Vt.

Garden-business owners like working with plants and soil, building pleasing environments and dealing with others who also make this their work. Heidi Karlsson was walking down a New York City street near the World Trade Center in 2001 when terrorists destroyed the buildings, killing more than 2,700 people. Her reaction to that experience, plus her marriage to a globe-trotting engineer, led her to leave both Manhattan and her job as an account manager for a marketing-communications company.

She landed in Mexico City in a residence with a large garden that she enjoyed. "After 9/11, getting in the dirt felt good," she reports. "I thought, 'Let's pursue this and see if I can make some money doing it.' " She did a few landscape designs for friends in Mexico and Sweden, where she lived next, and decided to study the subject formally, first at Kew Gardens in London, then in Japan and, finally, in Dallas, where she is studying for a master's degree in landscape architecture. She works for a local landscape architect and designs gardens on the side. Eventually, Ms. Karlsson wants to design therapeutic gardens and meditation spaces for resorts.

There are an estimated 22,000 landscape architects in the U.S, according to Julia Lent, director of government affairs for the American Society of Landscape Architects in Washington, D.C. Most states require landscape architects to be licensed, which typically requires a master's degree. The work itself is more akin to engineering than creative garden design and is involved with topics such as highway drainage as much as plant selection, says Ms. Karlsson.

Landscape design, a largely unregulated field, involves choosing and arranging plants for gardens. Most landscape design is for private residences, although commercial-building owners also employ them. Landscape designers and architects do most of their work in offices, while landscape installers and maintenance companies are more likely to get dirty.

The most down-and-dirty gardening, however, is probably done by the growers who fill the supply chains for retailers, designers, installers and others. "It's not an easy business," says Bob Terry, a former turnaround consultant who began growing plants for nurseries in 1987. "In fact, it's probably one of the most difficult businesses to be in, because Mother Nature really does control your destiny."

A storm or drought in one area of the country can seriously affect his sales, reports Mr. Terry, now owner of Fisher Farms LLC in Gaston, Ore. In the early 1990s, manmade disaster struck when a popular pesticide unexpectedly turned toxic and destroyed many growers' inventories. But Mr. Terry says the buyers and others he deals with make it all worthwhile. "People in this business are honest," he says. "I carry huge receivables, in the millions, and I have very few losses, less than $10,000 a year."

Selling gardening supplies is unlikely to attract people interested in quick or big bucks. Gardening retail sales are growing at only about 1% a year, according to the National Gardening Association, although the industry experienced double-digit growth as recently as the 1990s. Seasonality is pronounced, with most sales coming in spring and summer and little activity the rest of the year. Mail-order sellers, big-box retailers and other specialty firms provide tough competition.

Services are easier to get into, but not any more profitable. Landscape designers command fees of around $50 an hour, and while senior partners in landscape-architect firms can earn six-figure salaries, the average is about $47,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook.

Although gardening can pay solid lifestyle dividends and also cover the bills, some find it more challenging than enjoyable, warns Mr. Butterfield. "A lot of people love plants," he says, "but I would tell them to be very careful."

-- Mr. Henricks, an Austin, Texas, journalist, is the author of "Not Just a Living: The Complete Guide to Creating a Business That Gives You a Life" (Perseus Books, 2002).

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