Features

Each Proven Winners variety is propagated through tissue culture, so there is clean, new stock every year. Cuttings are produced at a 10-acre greenhouse complex in Costa Rica and sent in packages of 50 to Pleasant View and the other growers, where they are rooted in plugs of soil. Most are then sold to wholesale growers in trays of 50 to 84 plants. The remainder are transplanted into pots and grown out to become "finished" plants, which are sold to retail garden centers. Great pains are taken to guarantee that disease isn't introduced anywhere along the line, from propagator to the home garden. "We test to ensure that this is so," says Henry.

From the beginning, the Huntingtons and their partners were determined to compete on quality and service, not price. Premium pricing meant that everyone down the marketing chain—wholesalers, retail garden centers and home gardeners—had to recognize the added value in a Proven Winners plant. "We were the first to create a consumer brand for bedding-plant products," Henry says, noting that the brand inspires loyalty among devoted gardeners who are willing to pay more for products that help them be successful.

Proven Winners has been credited with expanding the number of plant species available to American gardeners, including some that most gardeners had never heard of before. The increasing popularity of container gardening is also due at least in part to Proven Winners' idea of selling combinations of plants that go particularly well together. "If you bought a planter or a hanging basket at a garden center 10 or 15 years ago, it would have probably contained just one kind of plant. It's amazing what is being done with container combinations today," Henry observes.

The trade magazine Greenhouse Grower, which selected Pleasant View for its 2004 Grower of the Year award, has described Proven Winners as "a revolutionary force in the industry" and cited Jeff and Henry for their ability "to always stay on the leading edge, while growing and adapting their business to meet demands." Brett Andrus, president of the New Hampshire Growers Association, concurs. He is the nursery manager at Churchill's Gardens in Exeter, N.H., one of Pleasant View's larger customers for finished plants, so he speaks from personal experience. "The Huntingtons have done so much to raise the standards of horticulture in New Hampshire and across the country," he says. "Over the past 15 years, they have shown many smaller operations how to bring their business to a higher level."

With the rapid growth of Proven Winners and Proven Selections, Pleasant View outgrew its Loudon location, and in 1998 the Huntingtons built a new facility on the site of a reclaimed sand pit in Pembroke. In 2005 the nursery expanded again, and six highly automated greenhouses were built at Loudon, replacing a number of smaller, outdated structures. And just this year, construction was completed on a $2 million biomass plant that now heats all the greenhouses in Pembroke, reducing Pleasant View's fuel oil consumption by 250,000 gallons a year.

The image brought to mind by the word "greenhouse" doesn't match the reality at Pleasant View. Imagine standing in a greenhouse the size of a football field, connected by large sliding doors to five other greenhouses just as big. These are just the newest greenhouses at the Loudon location, which has about 8.5 acres under cover. The Pembroke facility has another greenhouse complex that encloses 4.5 acres. In addition, there are outdoor nursery beds and trial gardens, warehouse-size buildings for shipping and receiving and storing supplies, and of course the wood-fueled biomass plant.

Page: < Prev 1 2 3 4 5 Next >

 Easy to print version