HEALTH & SAFETY
Colesville NURSERY In
light of the new rules and regulations regarding the health and safety of customers and employees, many nursery and landscape business have risen to the occasion of altering operations. Mask wearing, social distancing, and cleaning and sanitization are the name of the game in the COVID-19 pandemic. Colesville Nursery, like many other VNLA member companies, has implemented the necessary changes to operate, and we are encouraged to see the innovation our industry promotes to continue to serve the public. We asked Kate Leffler, General Manager and Vice President at Colesville, to share some of the changes that the company had made in response to the new operational guidelines. Kate said: We have purchased more official signage about social distancing as we move into phase one of reopening. Those signs read “masks required” in both English and Spanish, and “We are practicing social distancing” in English and Spanish as well. The most important message, above anything else, has been employee and customer safety. We know that this is not a money-making spring for us. We knew that if/when we had a positive case, we would have to close because of the close proximity of everyone’s working environment. So far, we have not had any positive cases of COVID-19 and we hope to keep it that way. We rely strongly on trust that our employees are going home and to work and doing the things we are asking them to do to social distance in their downtime. We have asked them to limit trips into town for lunch since Ashland is an exit off of Interstate 95, etc. We were lucky enough to get the PPP loan from our bank (which is a small Virginia-owned bank), so we know we are very lucky not to have to focus on sales numbers. If we did not get the PPP loan in the first round our strategy would be completely different. We began by closing on Saturdays because the first Saturday we were open we had a record Saturday and this place was a ZOO. It was as if people were treating Colesville as a park and I was not okay with that. We closed on Saturdays for the remainder of spring the following week. 14 • VNLA News • Summer 2020
Colesville employees with masks loading tree
Colesville sign regarding masks and other instructions
