Chauncey Nichols Nursery

Customer Profile: Chauncey Nichols Nursery

Chauncey Nichols Nursery, Inc. is a wholesale nursery located in Forest Hill, Louisiana, a city known as the nursery capital of the state.

Chauncey Nichols started the business in 1987 and it was a dream realized for a man who had been working in the nursery business since he was a kid. “My family moved to Forest Hill when I was ten years old. Growing up, I started working in nurseries close by our home, places I could get to on my bicycle,” Chauncey said.

What started as a summer job became a budding career path. During middle school he was asked what kind of job he wanted when he got older. “My dream was to be in the nursery business. I liked propagation and I could see how to make money with the nursery business,” he said.

Chauncey kept moving in the direction he had chosen. Throughout high school, he worked in nurseries in the afternoons and the summer. During one school break, he recalls working a 40-hour week at a local nursery. “I think it may have been over Easter break. I made a $1.50 an hour and I cleared $60.00 that week. It was a big deal,” he said. After graduating high school, Chauncey continued learning the ropes and got a job at a local nursery where he worked for three years.

In 1987, he branched out on his own, determined to grow a business of his own. “I started my own nursery. It was very small, about two acres. That was back when BWI was just coming into the area. I had to find odd jobs to make ends meet and there were several times I unloaded fertilizer and peat moss trucks for BWI,” Chauncey said.

In 1993, he was looking to expand, and he ended up buying the nursery where he had worked after high school. It was a decision that required a leap of faith. “Larry Bates sold me 68 acres. There was maybe 10 acres of nursery. It was a big jump and a risk for me at the time,” he said. “He owner-financed it and we were able to pay for it in 15 years.”

It was a risk that paid off in the long run. Chauncey Nichols Nursery is a successful wholesale nursery. It may have started with one young man’s dream and hard work but Chauncey’s nursery now employs 28 people. “Back when I started, it was just me. I remember telling my wife if I could just hire one guy it would help so much. Now we have 28 employees. It’s grown quite a bit since back in the day,” he said.

In 2010, Chauncey bought Flo’s Nursery, a business owned by his wife’s parents. “We’ve been able to grow and expand over the years. In the nursery business, you either expand and grow, or you’re backing up. It has been a really good addition. The Lord has blessed me tremendously with my business,” he said.

Propagation and Patience - Plants take time to grow, sometimes years from the time they are planted until they are ready to be sold. Chauncey usually starts with a cutting and seed from his nursery, but occasionally he uses liners which are small plants purchased from another nursery. “We take a small plant and pot it in onegallon containers. For instance, a liner we will do in May and keep it until the next spring in a greenhouse. Some we will sell in gallon containers but most we bump up to three gallons which is our biggest seller. It’s a process that takes a while. It can take several years from the time you start a plant to get it to the point of sell,” Chauncey said.

Some of the most popular items sold at the nursery include woody ornamentals and patented or branded plants. “For years the nurseries pretty much used their own plants. You never saw very many patented plants, but today there are lots of patented plants or branded plants that you have to pay royalties on. It’s a very popular thing. You pay a royalty or patent fee, but they put a lot of money into advertising so it comes back around,” he said.

Customer service is a key component to any successful business and a focal point for Chauncey. His customers consist of nurseries, garden centers, and landscapers. The nursery isn’t open to the general public. “We ship a lot of stuff on a local hauler. We also do quite a bit of drive-in business. We try to get customers in and out as quickly as possible. I’m still doing business with some of my first customers, people I’ve been doing business with for more than 30 years. We have a really good return business,” he said.

Though there is an uptick in business in spring, Chauncey Nichols Nursery stays busy year-round. “Spring starts mid-February and runs through May, depending on the weather. When the temperature starts hitting 90 to 95 degrees, it tapers off some. That’s for the garden centers, but landscapers are working all year long. We have a really good year-round business with them. There’s not hardly a day that goes by that we’re not shipping plants.”

Over the years, Chauncey’s role in the company has changed. Where once it was a one-man operation that he was growing from the ground up, now his days look a little different. “A normal day looks a lot different than it did then. I’m usually in the office by 6:30. I’m in and out of my truck a lot because I’m overseeing the work. I have people taking care of the day-to-day operations but right now I’m staying busy with an expansion. Last year we were able to add 20 more acres on the back of our place and I’ve been doing quite a bit of the dirt work on that,” he said.

Running a nursery keeps him busy but also allows him to be close to family. Nichols makes it a point to have lunch with his wife Phoebe each day at their home which is located on the same piece of land as the nursery. The Nichols have four children, ranging in age from 21 to 11 years old. “It’s been a great blessing to all of us. We’ve been able to do a lot of things as a family because of the success of the nursery,” he said.