The nursery after hours
There’s something special about the nursery at night, in the quiet, predusk hours after the crews have gone home and the phone calls have stopped. The daytime nursery and the nighttime nursery are as different as, well, day and night. During the day, the nursery is a scene of organized chaos: trucks and loading equipment coming and going, the loading crews racing to pull tomorrow’s deliveries and pick-ups, soil and supply deliveries, and, naturally, those unexpected problems that arise and require our immediate attention.
The nursery after hours is also full of life, but in a different way. The sounds of truck engines and forklifts give way to the songs of robins, barn swallows, and the ubiquitous, noisy chatter of killdeer. Walk by a block of Agastache or Allium, and you’ll find that they’re teeming with bees and butterflies, so much so that the plants and insects seem to move and breathe as a single organism. Pass by a row of Buddleia, and you can easily spend half an hour trying to capture the perfect picture of a Monarch on a flower, while realizing that the scent of butterfly bush perfectly embodies the spirit of a summer day. Of course, these sights and sounds existed during the day too, but, somehow, they were drowned out by the noise of a working nursery. Or maybe we were too busy noticing weeds, taking phone calls, recognizing all the work that needs to be done, or troubleshooting a disease issue to appreciate the beauty that surrounds us on any given day.
Whatever roles we find ourselves in, I believe most of us were initially drawn to this industry by similar motives: we’re independent and passionate about the outdoors, we knew that a nine-to-five office job wasn’t for us, and we chose a career that, in some small way, allows us to bring beauty to our communities and the world around us. People turn to plants for comfort and a sense of calm, and we use gardening as a way to relieve stress and anxiety, yet our industry is a highly demanding one - just as prone to burnout and just as affected by the pressures of the economy and the labor market as any other profession, and, in some cases, even more so. Because no matter our position, whether we’re growers, purchasers, designers, or inventory managers, our roles are ultimately all tied to sales and budgets. We work in a seasonal industry where every week matters, and a good or bad spring can make or break us.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the craziness of the daytime nursery. The chaos can be addictive, because chaos means that we’re busy, and busy means that we’re selling plants. But there’s nothing like walking the nursery in the cool of the evening when no one else is there, and you can think clearly for the first time all day. Or coming in before the crews arrive to see the way the dew looks on the Sporobolus flowers as the sun comes up. It’s at times like these that I remember how fortunate I am to have exclusive access to these sights. I think it’s important to appreciate these moments that remind us of why we joined this industry in the first place. If we don’t, we can risk being so consumed by our work and the intensity of our industry that we lose sight of what we love about it.
