Grand prairie perennial expansion
The past few weeks have been somewhat confounding, as the worsening drought in our area has been compounded by levels of intense heat and humidity that we typically don’t see until August. And this week started out with below-normal temperatures that kept us in jackets all day. After the 2020 season, I think many of us were expecting and hoping for a return to normalcy this year, so the challenges we are now facing are a bit disappointing. But we have been able to stay motivated by moving forward with our 2022 perennial expansion and forging ahead with our plans to increase shrub and perennial production this year.
We broke ground on our perennial expansion project at the beginning of June, and we have been thrilled to watch the steady parade of dump trucks and excavation equipment transform our future production area over the last few weeks. Beginning next spring, we will have an additional 5 beds of perennials that will hold over 160,000 one-gallon pots, and we plan to turn this space over twice in one season to fully maximize the space. Our new perennial block will stretch along the previously unused strip of land that sits behind our greenhouses, along Garden Prairie Road.
Mike Mennenoh began our perennial program in 2009, with a single row of polyhouses and 72,000 perennials, and fought for each additional block of perennial space in a nursery that was known only for our shrubs. Over the past 12 years, we have slowly expanded our perennial production into four more blocks as well as the large open block we call the “pad”. This year, we plan to pot over 600,000 one-gallon and three-gallon perennials, with another significant increase planned for 2022. We are excited about the opportunity to add varieties back into production and to increase production of Hostas and Astilbes, and other areas where we have repeatedly fallen short over the years.
In recent years, our biggest challenge has been producing enough inventory, especially in spring, of trees, shrubs, and perennials. Thanks to repeated, honest feedback from our customers, we realized that we needed to address this issue, and we knew it was now or never.
This year, we have tried to look beyond the norms that we have typically accepted over past seasons of production. Old habits can be hard to change, but with new leadership and a desire to grow, we have been able to find ways to maximize space and production by being creative and fostering a more team-based approach among our crews. We are potting perennials into spaces previously designated only for shrubs, and potting shrubs back into open spaces as we sell through inventory. Our goal is to produce enough inventory to satisfy demand for the current year so that we aren’t selling through spring inventory in the fall. Regardless of what the second half of 2021 has in store for us, we are determined to build our inventory to better accommodate the needs of our customers. We are excited about the next step in our expansion, which is moving our Accelerator® program to Garden Prairie, so that we can increase production of container trees. We appreciate the motivation and feedback from our customers, because, ultimately, it is your support that has allowed us to grow over all these years.
