The Sod Truth : Despite Rains, Southland Nurseries Still Hurting

Now that California’s six-year drought is history, one would expect a greener year for Southern California nurseries, sod farms and landscapers.

Indeed, a buying spree in March and April that saw some nurseries ringing up record sales was welcome relief for the area’s gardening industry, where several businesses have suffered serious sales declines in recent years.

But sales have since flattened, and by some accounts, the industry is just as dry as when the drought was in full swing.

Few in the gardening business expect a complete recovery until Southern California pulls itself out of the lingering recession and the sluggish housing market improves.

“As long as the housing industry is off, our industry will not fully recover,” said Mickey Strauss, president of American Wholesale Nurseries in Simi Valley and Newhall.

In a sign of the times, the California Assn. of Nurserymen, a Sacramento-based trade group, has seen the number of its member firms plunge 20% since 1990, to 863.

The decline reflects an industrywide consolidation, as struggling independent nurseries close their doors or sell out to large chains, said Ross Hutchings, an association spokesman. In addition to the recession and the drought, he said, small nurseries have also been hard hit by growing competition from mass merchants such as Home Depot, Wal-Mart and Kmart, which are more aggressively marketing nursery items.

Michael Kunce, president of Armstrong Garden Centers Inc., a Glendora-based chain, said that in the last few years he has been contacted by about 60 independent nurseries asking if he’d be interested in buying them out. But Kunce said he isn’t risking an expansion right now. “The mortality rate is very high among garden centers.”

At Chatsworth Garden Nursery, owner Randy Mineo said: “We’re lucky we’re alive today.”

Mineo, who has been in business since 1979, said his sales have fallen 25% over the last three years. To survive, he has cut his payroll by about a third and reduced prices to compete with the mass merchants. His sales have rebounded since the winter rains ended.

Still, Mineo worries that independent nurseries such as his are “a dying breed.”

Other independent nursery owners share his concern. Gary Saito, owner of Valley Wholesale Nursery in Pacoima, said his sales have plunged 60% to 70% in the last few years. Saito has been in the nursery business for 30 years and at his current site for 14. He once had seven employees; now he has one full-time and one part-time worker.

“Nurseries got through the Depression. They got through the early ‘70s when there were massive aerospace layoffs in the Valley,” Saito said. “But this was a double whammy, with the drought and the economy.”

Now, he said, “I’m just trying to keep my gates open.”

Hugh Palmer, owner of Palmer’s Nursery in North Hollywood, said his business has slowed along with the recent move by Lockheed Corp. out of Burbank and the closing of the General Motors Corp. plant in Van Nuys. His sales are now half what they were four years ago, and he expects a further decline this year.

“I have quite a few people that have come in and they can’t buy much because their unemployment check doesn’t go that far,” he said.

Palmer said he survives because he owns the property--it’s been in his family since 1948--and his overhead is low. He keeps just one part-time worker and has only 180 rosebushes in stock, compared to 1,500 roses several years ago.

If there’s hope to be had, it is in customers such as Valerie and Gordon Scott, who visited Chatsworth Garden Nursery on a recent weekday morning with their landscaper, Roger Rutherford of Westlake Village. Landscapers are particularly sensitive to swings in the housing market, and home sales and new construction have been in the doldrums for three years.

With Rutherford’s help, the Scotts have been putting in sequoia trees, bushes and annual flowers, and they’re building a larger pool. It is Rutherford’s third project in Mountain View Estates, and he’s hoping that word of mouth will produce more leads.

Three years ago, Rutherford recalled, he might get four calls a day from prospective customers. “Then I went for months without getting any calls,” he said. “I’d have to go out and shake the bushes for business.”

At Boething Treeland Farms Inc. in Woodland Hills, the weekend crowds in the last month have been bigger than in years, owner John Boething said. Native varieties such as Monterey pines, sequoias and California sycamores are selling well. Still, he’s cautious about predicting a big upturn in sales anytime soon.

Boething has 500 employees and eight farms throughout the state. After 41 years in business, he said, this is the worst downturn he’s ever seen. His sales--90% of which are wholesale--have fallen 20%, and prices are down by the same percentage.

Boething said he gets along by keeping overhead low and staying free of debt. But he expects the industry will continue to feel pain because wholesalers are saddled with so much excess inventory that they’ve been dumping stock at rock-bottom prices.

“It grows and it costs money to maintain it,” he said. “You can’t just store it like bottles of whiskey or shoes.”