How to Start a Mail Order Nursery

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It is important to choose your boxes and packing materials carefully to ensure that your plants will arrive at their destination safely.
It is important to choose your boxes and packing materials carefully to ensure that your plants will arrive at their destination safely.
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“So You Want to Start a Nursery” by Tony Avent provides a primer on the nursery industry as a whole, from starting a business to keeping it running.
“So You Want to Start a Nursery” by Tony Avent provides a primer on the nursery industry as a whole, from starting a business to keeping it running.

Tony Avent wrote So You Want to Start a Nursery (Timber Press, 2003) as “a reality check for anyone wanting to start a nursery,” drawing on his own experience transitioning from a government job to a full-time nurseryman. Now the owner of Plant Delights Nursery, Avent shares his expertise on how to start a nursery with wit and clarity; the book is devoted to the business and planning concerns of the nursery owner. The following excerpt from Chapter 9 deals with setting up a mail order nursery, from deciding what products to offer to shipping and delivery concerns.

You can purchase this book from the MOTHER EARTH NEWS store: So You Want to Start a Nursery.

The Mail Order Nursery

Most mail order nurseries started as backyard operations that evolved into mail order businesses without a real business plan. These nurseries are typically those that grow their own plants. The larger mail order nurseries, by contrast, purchase plants that they then offer for resale. One disadvantage to this latter strategy is that nurseries without a retail component to dispose of unsold inventory must get rid of it at the season’s end even though so much money is tied up in those unsold items. While nurseries that grow their own plants may suffer this same fate, the costs involved are usually much less.

What Products Will You Offer?

  • Published on Sep 25, 2014
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