Growing potted trees for profit

Catch12

I’ve always had an interest in growing trees both from seed and bare root. I was thinking why not try and make some money from it. What I was planning was to source some higher value landscaping trees like acers and more and grow them to larger sizes in maybe 10 to 15 gallon pots.

Anyone any advice or thoughts? Would it be difficult to find a market?

Thanks.

looksee

Finding a market would depend on where you are, what you are offering and how much effort you are prepared to put in. People who start small scale nurseries usually very quickly go to the wall or expand. Generally the former. Its like any business, if you approach it in a half-assed way expecting it to look after itself, and the customers to appear from nowhere, you are going to be sadly disappointed.

Catch12

Thanks for the reply. Do you operate a nursery or have any experience of it?

looksee

No, this isn't about running a nursery, its business 101. Doing the 'thing' (growing trees) that is the core of your business is the easy part, its everything else that dictates whether you will make a success of it or not.

magicbastarder

Catch12 wrote: »

Would it be difficult to find a market?

do you have much space to dedicate to this?
also, do you expect to do it full time?

Catch12

I do have space for this. I don’t expect it to be full time, at least in the 1st 3-4 years.

looksee

Your question is about selling. There are two ways you could approach this, direct to the public or wholesale to garden centres.

In order to sell directly to the public you will have to have advertising, signage and access for people to pull in at very least. Depending on where you live this last could immediately cause you problems with Planning regulations and neighbours. You will have to invest in your site looking presentable and tidy - if people think the situation looks untidy they will tend to think poor quality. You have to decide how you will be open and available to the public. You will also need a good reason for people to come to you rather than go to a large, well organised and stocked garden center. Cost is the only reason that will matter so your stock will have to be both good quality and cheap. You would ideally also need a web site (how else are people going to find you?) - if you could organise this yourself then great, otherwise you will have to pay someone to do it.

To sell direct/wholesale to garden centers you will need very well grown stock that you can sell much cheaper than the wholesalers - or why would the garden centers bother coming to you? And while I don't know the details I suspect you would have to be selling certified stock - certified by whom and for what I don't know, but I reckon its going to be essential.

Its at this stage you begin to realise that you cannot compete in this kind of an area unless you make serious investment of time and money and have an organisation big enough to absorb all the costs and then produce a profit. And then all the fun is gone out of it.

Lumen

You don't need public access if you sell online and deliver.

There is a market for direct sales to the public at prices lower than garden centres with high overheads but higher than wholesale nurseries with scale and low overheads but who won't sell to the public for fear of undercutting their wholesale customers.

The key is good photos and social media engagement.

Catch12

Thanks for the replies. The plan would be to sell direct to the public and to landscapers by advertising and perhaps a website. I would try to offer larger trees in bigger pots and trees that might only be available from the likes of future forest, just a much smaller range.

macraignil

Here is a list of some of your Irish competitors from Teagasc the government agricultural research group. There is also SAP nurseries that are fairly big. Might be worth considering talking to some of these growers to get a bit more information on the market. When working on large landscaping projects a few years back the trees would have been brought in from abroad in a shipping container at prices that would probably have been lower than trees from the Irish suppliers.

Harry Palmr

Strikes me that is most viable if you are in Dublin and probably the right part of Dublin at that (or adjacent) so increasing chances of trade and lower delivery costs - ie big gardens in the better off areas. You'd really need to sell yourself and product as a bespoke business with strong one to one selling and therefore the ability to speak well and convincingly about the trees and their needs and handling and probably horticulture in general terms.