2026 Open House Recap

Macahl and Jennifer led guests through our propagation houses, where every plant we grow gets its start as a cutting, a seed or a tissue-culture plantlet.

Propagation had about 1.1 million units scheduled through Open House week alone: 71% unrooted cuttings, 27% seed and 2% tissue culture, across a huge range of varieties with very different needs.

Most of our plants start as unrooted cuttings. They arrive from our suppliers, go into the cooler, then are stuck and set on the bench. Every variety has its own protocol for the type of cutting, rooting hormone, environment and rooting time.

1. Receive
2. Cooler
3. Stick
4. Bench

Seed comes from our suppliers or from specialty sources. Depending on the plant, it may be soaked, cold-stratified or given another special treatment before it's sown, by machine or by hand. Germination varies by species, seed lot and season. Guests got to see our seeding machine at work.

1. Receive
2. Pretreat
3. Sow
4. Germinate

In Prop 1 and 2, the goal is to push rooting while managing many different crops under one roof. Bench heat from our in-house boiler, a new mist system that adjusts to how quickly the air is drying out the cuttings, fogger fans, baffling, lighting and shade cloth all work together. As Macahl put it, "We're experts at maximizing the compromise." We can't create a perfect environment for every crop, so we create conditions that work reliably across all of them.

This year we also added a new propagation inventory system. It tracks what was scheduled, what was produced and what's ready, so we catch shortages earlier. It's a behind-the-scenes investment that means more reliable product for our customers. The biggest challenges are the ones you'd expect: very different crops sharing one environment, new and obscure varieties with no established protocols, seasonal differences, and constant testing and refinement.

Prop 3: holding, not pushing

Prop 1 and 2 are designed to push plants through rooting. Prop 3 has almost the opposite job, and guests could feel the difference in temperature and humidity as soon as they walked in. Built about two years ago, it stages and holds finished liners and plugs and houses our stock plants. Moving finished plants here frees up the active propagation benches faster, which increased our total propagation capacity.

Our stock program keeps about 140 varieties. A stock plant isn't just a plant. It's future production material. Cutting quality depends on timing (time of year, time of day and the plant's stage), on the type of cutting (juvenile or mature, soft or woody, tip or basal) and on its source: a dedicated stock plant, production inventory, a plug or an outdoor stock bed. Different sources can give very different cutting quality and rooting results.

Macahl then demonstrated a collection: what makes a good tip cutting and what gets rejected, why we take basal cuttings from plants like Agastache, and how we divide Ephedra and Veronica (Veronica two different ways). The collected material went into the cooler, just like a real collection.

Stock needs constant oversight. It has to be ready when cuttings are scheduled, kept at sustainable numbers and refreshed once it has served its purpose, since older plants bring more maintenance and pest problems. We scout diligently, use targeted treatments and rely on biocontrols (predatory wasps, predatory mites, lacewings, Orius and Cryptolaemus) to keep clean material going into propagation.

Adding a new plant comes down to three questions. Can we find it commercially, and if not, can we realistically maintain stock ourselves? Can we propagate it, by which method, and with what expected loss? And can we do it successfully again? Repeated success is what gives us confidence, and that can take multiple seasons or even years.

1. Sourcing
2. Protocol
3. Repeatability

Propagation isn't just sticking cuttings or sowing seed. It's managing plant biology, environment, timing, sourcing, inventory and repeatability together, taking something naturally variable and making it consistent enough to produce reliably at commercial scale.

With the shipping crew working live behind them, Ken walked guests through what happens after a customer clicks Submit Order, from an electronic order to a rack of plants ready for the truck.

Sales reviews every order for availability, quality and special instructions. Once it's confirmed, the order goes to Shipping, where it's routed to a truck and assigned to a pulling crew. Our custom pulling app shows the crew the exact crop, quantity and current location of every plant, so there's no guesswork as crops move around the nursery.

Pulled racks are watered and staged, and our system prints retail labels straight from the customer's order, in the same order the plants were pulled, with customer branding, pricing and plant information. The processing line does another quality check, cleans and deadheads, labels and verifies counts. Each rack gets a final count and a rack label with the customer, order number, counts and truck stop.

1. Submit
2. Review
3. Confirm
4. Route
5. Assign
6. Pull
7. Water
8. Label
9. Process
10. Verify
11. Ready to load

Our systems handle the complexity so our people can focus on the plants, and on getting customers exactly what they ordered.

From our dock to your door

Jason Lewis, our Fleet Manager, picked up where Ken left off, with loading and delivery. We treat delivery as the last step in the growing process, not just transportation.

Our fleet runs from 53-foot semis for big seasonal loads, to straight box trucks for weekly top-offs and tighter drop spots, to gooseneck truck-and-trailers up to 32 feet, with extra box trucks added in season. Plants ride enclosed from our dock to yours, out of the weather.

Inside, they travel on rolling racks and custom shelving built for high-density crops, locked down so nothing shifts, tips or gets crushed, on air-ride suspension that cushions root balls and blooms. Our drivers know they're hauling live plants, not freight. They watch plant condition and transit time the whole route, double-check every manifest, and unload with smooth lift gates, leaving you a clean drop space and stocked shelves.

Average per truck. Peak season packs about as much driving into three months as the other nine combined.

The goal: the quality we grow in our greenhouses is exactly the quality you receive.

Adam Rigby, our Production Manager, welcomed guests to the planting shed, where plugs become the finished pots that ship to you.

Production plants for about 10 acres here at the nursery, and for the last couple of years for our Garland facility, an hour north. Here that means 26 greenhouses, 12 D-frame houses and 151 outdoor beds, each holding 2,200 to 3,300 gallon pots.

TV screens and handheld tablets show the crew the day's queue: the pot size, where each crop is headed and how many of each variety to expect. A soil tower rides the elevator up the Pack machine, and sensors in the hoppers drop soil onto the conveyor as it's needed. We go through up to five towers a day of Berger mix, about 60% peat moss and 25% natural fiber, plus perlite, lime and a wetting agent.

1. Soil
2. Fill pots
3. Dibble
4. Plant by hand
5. Label
6. Water & feed

A crew member marks each pot with a dibble, and every plug is planted by hand. Down the belt, the Label Gator, an automated print-and-apply labeler from Great Lakes Label, tags each pot, replacing slow hand labeling. In the watering tunnel, every plant gets two treatments: Nutriculture, a water-based nutrient feed for fast root growth and a steady supply of food, and mycorrhizal fungi, which grow a web that works like extra roots. It helps the plant reach hard-to-get minerals like phosphorus and come through transplant shock much better.

On the gallon line, Echinacea, lavender, Gaillardia, Perovskia, Phlox paniculata and ornamental grasses (except blue fescue) also get wood chips, which hold in moisture, keep the plants from drying out and hold down weeds.

This season, 22 H-2A seasonal workers, our "Amigos," are part of the production crew. Some are here for three months, some for ten. It's a big sacrifice to be away from their families that long, and we're glad to have them.

As Adam put it, flowers feed pollinators like bees and butterflies, support local biodiversity, hold soil in place and clean the air. We're proud of what we grow.

Hosted by Cort Cox and Ethan.

Hosted by Adrea Dent.