#21 INTRODUCTIONS/ (revised 6/10) " the usual morning start"

Nick drove the old van to her motel early that morning. It had seen its glory long ago delivering flowers and plants to his customers. The rear hubcaps were gone. Spread out on the back floor were oily radiator hoses, clamps, assorted wrenches, a road hard spare tire wedged in and a half case of crankcase oil. It all goes to hell after 200,000 miles.

The passenger side had the classic garden store owners look; piled high with foam coffee cups, Wendy’s wrappers and diet coke plastic bottle tops. In the days when he went through the Marlboros, the empty little red boxes were scattered all over. There was always two or three coffee cups half filled with water and jammed with smoked butts.

God, he used to love to smoke and think and create. The best drag he would every take was when he watched customers just suck the products off the shelf from some display he made in the early morning hours. He would light up and inhale, exhale and say to himself,

“God damned, I knew it would work”.

He extended his long right arm and graded all the debris from the passenger seat onto the floor, shoving the stuff back under the frame for her shoes to find solid ground for the ride. He grabbed the latch and pushed the door open. “Good morning Nick” she said as she slipped her legs into the designated spot on the floorboard, balancing her Starbucks 13 shot soy hazelnut vanilla cinnamon with extra white mocha and caramel as she groped for the cushion.

They parked. Nick opened the door for her to The Village Pantry.

He liked these greasy old cafes where the waitresses were big and fat and friendly with the gravely voices and a pencil stuck behind their ears. There was no bullshit, no cute phrases, no fucking uttering of "enjoy". It was just good food and good service. W

here ever he landed, the first order of businesses was to find one in that town. He ordered the same thing, never changed; two eggs over hard, two pieces of crisp bacon, one piece of sourdough if he could get it and black coffee. It got so that when the girls saw him pull up each morning, the eggs went on the griddle. There were no words exchanged.

The food was delivered, the paper was read and the day began.

#20 INTRODUCTIONS* (revised 6/10) "discovery and reality"

Sarah Lindsey-Banks had a lot of reading and thinking ahead of her that evening. She had rented a second floor motel room near Nick's place with those same gulf breezes wafting through the curtains. A storm had just passed leaving the air crisp and sweet. She loved the ocean. On weekends she and her husband, John, would drive the 90 miles from Portland to the Pacific beaches of Newport. When first light splashed across the breakers, she would walk the rock jetty that pushed into the sea from the tiny fishing harbor.

That would all have to change.

Sarah opened Nick’s faded brown notebook and thumbed through the pages. Nick, she thought, had left no stone unturned. It was complete record, a master plan of his vision.

But was it? Or was it all outdated in this new world of retailing? As night moved toward dawn, Sarah became convinced that this plan was just as relevant as when Nick penned it. Yes, the change of customers, the style, the presentation needed to be re-worked, but the basic logic was as important today as it was years ago when Nick was on fire with this dream. Finally, as the sun peaked up and across the Gulf water, Sarah closed the notebook tight and set it on the dresser.

Yes, this was the plan.

Now, her thoughts turned to what this all will mean for Sarah Lindsey-Banks. It was possible. Finally, it was this chance to mold her love of gardening into the lessons she learned at Harley and present to the American gardener and homeowner these innovative, exciting outlet for creative imaginations.

John had supported her search and her quest. He encouraged her to find this Nick Hudson and ask the hard questions. But was John prepared to lose a big part of her to this all consuming passion for the years to come? There would be endless hours of travel and meetings and decisions. There will be extreme sadness and frustration followed by rapid bursts of joy..... of accomplishment. Will he be ready? Would she be ready? One thing was for certain; she was going to need Nick Hudson. She was going to need others, too, on this adventure. Sarah showered and dressed for the last conversation with Nick at breakfast. It was time to move forward or move away.

#19 COMMENTS* (revised 6/10) "our moment"

I am a nurseryman,
a keeper of plants.

My moment is an hour of a day of a lifetime.
It is Mother's Day morning.


Mothers Day is high noon for a plant nursery. It defines us, a single measure of our success. It is the bragging day that I share with other nurseryman as we gather in snow bound winter mornings waiting for it again.

Nurseryman rise early that day to greet the light. The desertion of January and bite of March have moved on to warm and sky, leaf and flower. Soon, we will bask in their sounds of laughter, admiration and joy as generations gather to choose our springtime life for barren flower boxes.

But now, in the silence, it is only for us to see our perfection of clean pathways exploding with colors awaiting eager gardeners. We move silently through perfect lines of trees and flowers moist from the morning. We stand satisfied with the beauty and symmetry of our work. This time, Mother's Day, is why we are nurserymen.

It is our moment.

#18 CONVERSATIONS* part five (revised 6/10) "just dumb luck"

There was much she learned that afternoon along the gulf coast. They traded stories back and forth; Sarah and her sprint through the corporate maze, her success with Harley-Davidson, her moves from city to city, and her yearning for the peace that comes with being an artist and a gardener. Nick talked of his unending struggle to be the perfect plantsman in his chosen lot in life.

As the evening drew near and the warm breeze lifted Sarah’s red hair brushing back and forth across her eyes, she began to close in on important questions for Nick that may, at long last, lead her to or away from this crazy thought. She had been told by others that he had prepared himself many years ago for this same journey. She had been told about the notebook.

Sarah

Is it possible to bring back the small garden store to the industry? Is it also possible to duplicate this garden store all over the United States? They would be garden stores, like Jiffy-lubes or Starbucks, where gardeners, who re-locate to other towns and cities, can identify with them, their offerings and service? There would be no question where they shopped. It would be these same stores that would satisfy their needs in gardening wherever they land in America. Can this be done?

Nick

I am convinced that it is possible to do this; build a business and be profitable with a group of small garden stores, nearly identical in size, presentation, products, and operation.

Nick reached for the notebook. He thumbed through the worn pages and moved closer to Sarah as he continued. It was filled with scribbled notes, old photos, diagrams and torn out pages from magazines,

Nick

There was a time when I believed so much that it was possible that I prepared a plan to do just that. Gosh, he smiled broadly, I was a crazy man for this dream. I started from the beginning and built the whole thing in this notebook. Times have changed and some of my ideas won’t work anymore, but the core, the foundation of this plan still remains the same. Once, this notebook was going to be my next adventure, but I just could not keep all the balls in the air with what I had. I put it away from another day and that day just never got there.

This idea of a large group of garden centers has been tried before. Some are still operating and are successful. Many have failed. Often, they fail because the garden center owners who built them just did not understand how to do it. One owner thought that because she had a successful garden store, she could just build others the same way and they too would be just as successful. That was about all the planning and preparation she put into it.

Other chain garden centers failed because the investors believed that bigger is better. Those stores fell under their own weight of being too large and expansive, trying to be all things to all people. They had to “feed the bulldog” everyday, pushing money at all those expenses with the big stores and a big staffs. There are a lot of reasons why they failed and I talk about these failures in my notebook.

Sarah thumbed through the pages as Nick got up to make another pot of coffee. It was all here, she thought. Nick has taken this idea she had from the concept, to the operational philosophy, the building, the products offered for sale and the daily challenges of the stores. It was all here.

Sarah

As you built these stores in your notebook, what do you think is the most important secret for success?

Nick

There is no question about what is most important. It is the vision, determination, and sacrifice of the owners. I believe that the success of the garden store business and in fact any business depends on two things. First, half of it is pure dumb luck; being in the right place and the right time. I know a guy in North Carolina who has a large garden center in a city that has a population of about 200,000 people. He prides himself in making the right choices for his garden center that gives him profits year after year. He sits on garden center advisory boards and writes a column about his business. There is no doubt that he made a lot of good decisions along the way. But, the real truth is that half of his prosperity is because he is really the only game in town. Just by simple dumb luck, he ended up having it all by himself. He can make stupid mistakes and he still makes money. This guy can spend his day kicking customers out the front door and just as many will sneak in the back door to buy stuff from him. It isn’t his genius. It is mostly no brainer luck.

The other half of success falls directly on the owner. It is seeing the direction clearly, gutting it out day after day, and giving up short term needs for the payoff in the long run. Very few people are willing to do this. Once the owner takes his eye off this ball, the place is cooked.

If the goal is to build the national group of garden stores, the owners must make this commitment and with some plain dumb luck, it will work. Get the right people, stick to the plan, keep the eyes open to the luck that comes your way and use this luck as the gift it is.

Then hunker down and gut it out.