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5.01.2007
TRENTON (AP) — April showers didn’t necessarily bring flowers.
Instead, garden centers, nursery growers and landscapers across the country say heavy rains, unseasonably cold weather and snowstorms this month have been killing business, with the cold and mud keeping consumers from buying flowers, shrubs and vegetable seedlings.
East Coast garden center owners are using adjectives from “miserable” to “horrific” to describe the situation, and are hoping a warm, sunny weekend in many areas will help turn things around.
Spring planting has been delayed a couple of weeks for farmers who can’t get equipment in soggy fields, and winter crops like asparagus that should be getting harvested have not been.
“Right now, everybody’s just waiting till it dries out,” said Ben Casella of the New Jersey Farm Bureau.
Garden centers and wholesale nurseries from southern New England to South Carolina and through the Midwest say business is off — 50 percent at some locations.
Meanwhile, fuel costs for heating greenhouses are up dramatically.
“This week, we have done about 10 percent of the business we should do,” said George Lucas, owner of flower wholesaler Lucas Greenhouses in Monroeville, N.J.
Inventory is backed up at retailers and growers from the weather, which has shrunk the April-May window for peak garden sales, said New Jersey Agriculture Secretary Charles Kuperus.
In the Northwest, weather hasn’t been a problem, but inventory is stacking up on loading docks because East Coast retailers can’t take it, said John Aguirre, director of the Oregon Association of Nurseries.
Dave Bender, executive director of the Illinois Nurserymen’s Association, said this has been the worst spring start for many Midwest retailers in 25 years, with frostbite damaging shrubs and flowers, making them unsellable in an industry that “sells on beauty.”
In Massachusetts, Doris Mahoney, co-owner of the eight-store Mahoney’s Garden Centers chain, said the area has been lashed by rain, flooding and 60 mph winds at the Cape Cod location and temperatures in the 20s at night, cutting sales by a third.
Except for a balmy stretch in mid-March, it’s been similar in South Carolina, with frost damaging flowering shrubs and trees, said Robin Klein, manager of Woodley’s Garden Center in Columbia, S.C.
Not only is business down, but her staff is spending extra hours moving stock indoors at night and answering customers’ questions about how to protect the few things they’ve planted.
Callaway’s Nursery, with 23 stores across Texas, has seen “a hiccup” in its business from several weeks of cold, rainy weather, though the rain there is needed to get plants established before the summer heat, said marketing vice president Kimberly Bird.
Danny Blew, president of wholesaler Centerton Nursery in Upper Deerfield Township, N.J., said his regular customers in New England and the Mid-Atlantic just aren’t buying, making it his worst spring in 15 years.
“When it’s cold and rainy, people are not going to go out in their yards,” he said.
Ditto for those paid to do the work.
Nanci Angle of Lawrence Landscapes in Ewing, N.J., said it’s been too wet to install flowers and plants, except in areas on hills or with well-drained soil.
Georgia, on the other hand, has had virtually no rain for a month except about an inch from the recent nor’easter that drenched much of the country.
And so it’s dry soil that’s keeping people out of their gardens, said Wally Pressey of the Georgia Green Industry Association.
Raymond Bolzan, owner of Empire Farms in Liberty Township, N.J., would love to have that problem.
He’s spent days pumping four feet of water off his 75-acre sod field and could lose it all — about $70,000 worth — if he can’t get the rest off before the water starts heating up and kills the grass.