Cover Story

Member Highlight on Bennett’s Creek Nursery

Bennett’s Creek Nursery is approaching its 50th anniversary. The company is now in its third generation of ownership and leadership. Started in 1974 by Art Lancaster, the nursery began in Suffolk, VA growing plants in metal cans filled with topsoil. In the mid 90s, ownership transitioned to Wayne Sawyer and John Lancaster, Art’s nephew. After Wayne’s passing in 2015, Wayne’s son, Matthew, progressed from Vice President of Operations to the role of CEO. Matthew became the sole owner of the business in 2019 after negotiating stock purchases from John and Matthew’s sister. John passed in 2020 after a fight with cancer.

Trees

The business is now based in Smithfield, VA on a 420-acre property with 275 acres in container plant production with plenty of room to expand. Crops range from six-inch spring and fall annuals all the way to 25-gallon shade trees. In addition to the growing operation, the business operates four landscape distribution centers. These centers are located in Smithfield, Williamsburg, Virginia Beach, and Powells Point, NC.

Rack Wagon

Bennett’s Creek Nursery’s specialty is professional landscape products. Quality is not sacrificed for the sake of price. The product mix of annuals, perennials, grasses, vines, shrubs, and trees allows the nursery to be a one-stop-shop for its customers. The diversity is a strong advantage when working with customers to put together loads. Most of the woody shrubs are propagated in-house by a team that produces over 500,000 liners each year. Other plants are sourced as plugs, bare root, or liners from the many brands that Bennett’s Creek is licensed to grow.

Spring Annuals

Bennett’s Creek Nursery’s purpose is to provide opportunity for its employees and customers while enhancing the community. The nursery has employed many over its nearly five decades of operation. Some employees have been around more than four of those decades. Multiple families have had three or more family members employed at the same time. Countless customers have started and expanded their business utilizing the products grown by Bennett’s Creek. The nursery supports local Master Gardeners, the Norfolk Botanical Garden, as well as other charities and foundations. Many of the gifts are inkind donations of plants.

Distribution Center

What makes Bennett’s Creek Nursery unique is their people, processes, and accessibility. The combined knowledge of the employees is astounding. Decades of trial and error, as well as a push for continuous improvement, have generated this knowledge. The processes that have resulted from this knowledge are proven yet are always being tweaked to adapt to changes in technology and the environment. The nursery is a resource that can be reached in person, over the phone, through text, email, or the website can be shopped 24-7.

Potting and Loading Dock

The core values of the nursery are Improvement, Results, Collaboration, Integrity, and Humility. Improvements and Results go hand-in-hand and many of those improvements are shared in this article. Collaboration helps to achieve the results by working together to solve complex problems. Integrity applies to employees, customers, and vendors. The right thing is done even when no one is watching. Humility is important as boastfulness and pride do not fit well in the company’s culture. Employees are humble, but do not mind sharing their accomplishments and helping others.

Sprayer

Many of the improvements at the nursery are the results of ideas seen while touring other nurseries or attending conferences and trade shows. Some improvements are processes while others involve equipment or technology. The driving forces behind these improvements is typically to increase productivity, reduce inputs, improve worker comfort, and improve quality and consistency.

Propagation

An example of an improvement that achieved all the driving forces is the addition of a custom boom sprayer with both liquid and granular delivery systems. In 2016 the nursery put this machine into service. It has air ducts that blow the spray application directly into the plant canopy along with an electrostatic system that gives a charge to the spray and enable it to stick to all surfaces of the plants. The targeted spray application reduced chemical usage 20%. The granular delivery system has been utilized to apply pre-emergent herbicides. The process involves only two team members, an operator in the cab of a tractor and an assistant checking calibration trays and running irrigation, as opposed to a crew of several people hand cranking herbicides in personal protective equipment that is exhaustingly hot. With fewer people required, the pre-emergent applications occurred on schedule and the nursery saw fewer weeds resulting in less labor required for hand weeding.

Smithfield Farm

In 2017 the propagation department was moved to Smithfield from the original location in Suffolk. Propagation is the intensive care unit of the nursery. New plants begin their lives as stem cuttings with no roots. They need the best water possible to prevent against diseases. A new pump house was constructed utilizing data learned from irrigation pond research conducted by Virginia Tech. The water is drawn from the lake that receives the least runoff from the nursery greatly reducing recycled pathogens. It is filtered, acidified, and chlorinated to eliminate any remaining pathogens. These treatment processes all take place with variable flow rates as low as a garden hose or as high as multiple greenhouses irrigating.

Printer

Picking up and putting down plants is some of the hardest work on a container nursery. In 2020 the nursery began utilizing a specialty forklift to move packs of 60 threegallon plants. The forklift has been used to put down new potting and to pick it back up the following season for spacing. In the future another forklift will be added to allow for loading trailers in one field and unloading in another.

Forklift

The potting line was upgraded in 2020 as well. This line replaced aging equipment and allowed some potting processes to increase output. Additionally, a printing system was implemented to print item names and numbers on the side of the pots as they travel down the conveyor. This system removed two to four workers from the potting line and virtually eliminated the plastic stick tags that were inserted into every pot. In January 2023 a rice hull topping machine was added to the line. Rice hulls are applied to the top of the soil as a mulch for plants that can’t tolerated pre-emergent herbicides such as grasses and perennials. This machine will eliminate the need for two workers applying rice hulls by hand.

As Bennett’s Creek Nursery continues into the future it will continue to grow and improve. On the horizon is expansion of growing fields, pruning more consistently with machines, and increased implementation of material handling systems. The next generation of leaders are coming up the ranks and are being mentored by veteran leaders. The future looks bright! •