A Plant Nursery as a Profitable Backyard Business
By Andrew Wilson
Do you realize how many people in the neighborhood are turning green whenever they set their sights in your beautiful gardens? You can bet your bottom dollar they are as eager to have something like yours in their own lawns and backyards. With your own home and gardens as your models, it will not be difficult to find people in the neighborhood and in the nearby communities to buy young plants from you if you want to build a nursery as a profitable backyard business.
If you have a green thumb and a backyard, you have everything you need to start up a profitable backyard business.
Your market
If your home and grounds are beautifully landscaped with the healthiest plants you can grow, neighbors who pass by your home every day constitute your first line of customers. If you have adequate or more stocks to sell, consider contacting garden supply stores that sell plants. You can also join exhibits and have a website to meet other hobbyists and homeowners who are potential buyers.
Know what’s in
To make a profitable business out of your nursery, know the plants that in demand and that can be grown in small containers to maximize space and for easy selling. For instance, ‘pot-in-pot’ system is a kind of container gardening for large trees that you can do rather that plant them in the field that requires backbreaking digging of the soil and heavy watering. Container gardening is great because it can save you time, water and eliminate transplanting before selling.
Backyard plant nursery
‘Plugs, liners and whips’
These refer to plant starts that can be bought from wholesale nurseries for big discounts. You can re-plant them and nurture them before re-selling them at whopping profit margins.
Grow ‘mother’ plants
Once you have these, you can propagate them by cuttings or root division. This means growing new plants you can sell from zero capital. This makes great profit especially if you can grow ground covers or ornamental grasses that customers buy in dozens.
Ground covers
This is in. There is a demand for ground covers because using these plants in landscaping is smart. It requires no mowing, little water to maintain and minimal care. It can protect the topsoil from erosion and keep the soil moist and cool. It can be used as living mulch and can be resold when they thrive well in your garden. Moreover, these plants are easy to care for, to propagate, and to sell.Ornamental grass
This is another group of plants that are very salable. They can be used as ground covers, in rock gardens, in ponds, and in so many other ways. It is little wonder that they are landscapers’ favorite perennials. These low-maintenance plants can last through several seasons. An example is the Pampas grass.
Landscaping Trees and Shrubs
Growing trees and selling them to landscapers and homeowners who like shade in their gardens is another example of a profitable backyard business. Those who are successfully selling trees and shrubs can only attest to how they started with a few stocks that have grown into acres and hundreds if not thousands of trees.
A plant nursery is a good backyard business because it is something that anyone can do. It does not require one to be a professional, young or an expert; all you need are a backyard, a few hand tools, and a dose of interest to make the business profitable.
