Last Word with Angela Labrum, Bailey Nurseries

© Photo courtesy of Bailey Nurseries

Angela Labrum manages the lab she started 15 years ago. When Bailey Nurseries acquired Carlton Plants in 2018, she stayed on, and currently, her lab produces 1.4 million plants each year. She manages 22 people, along with four lab leaders.

Matt McClellan: What types of plants do you produce in the tissue culture lab at Bailey?

Angela Labrum: We primarily do trees and shrubs here in the lab. Half of what we do are Pyrus and Prunus rootstocks. We do all of our Acer rubrum and Acer freemanii in the lab. We also do a lot of Syringa, both S. vulgaris and S. reticulata, as well as Hydrangea quercifolia. Those are our big groups. We start sending our material to Jeff Stoven at our Yamhill propagation site in January. Then in March, we’ll switch and start shipping plants to Stacia Lynde, who manages the other prop site here in Dayton. We try to fill their low season with TC.

MM: What do you enjoy about horticulture?

AL: Horticulture has a lot of wonderful, kind, humble people who love to grow plants, which is really fun. My specialty is tissue culture, Jeff’s specialty is softwood cuttings and Stacia’s specialty is layers, seed beds and grafting. It’s fun because between the three of us, we have more than 25 years of experience in our specialty. It’s fun to be able to pick each other’s brains and learn from each other.

MM: Why did you get into tissue culture specifically?

AL: I went to Oregon State University and focused on greenhouse production. I didn’t know anything about tissue culture. When I started college, I needed a job to pay my rent. I applied for a posting in the hort library, and it was doing tissue culture. I was hired, and I loved it. I always loved science. I had been thinking about doing chemistry as well as horticulture, so this was a fun combination of science and horticulture. It became my career. I ended up going to Microplant Nurseries, and after I took a four-year break to have my children, Jon Bartch at Carlton Plants hired me to start the lab here. I’ve been here ever since.

MM: What do you enjoy most about your job?

AL: I love all the trialing and testing we get to do. That is my favorite part in tissue culture versus other parts of horticulture. When you set up an experiment to trial, you can get results in a month to two months. Everywhere else, it’s a lot slower. Often it’s a year, sometimes even four years until you see your crop come out of the ground and you know if what you did made a difference or not. I love that there’s so many things we can tinker with and that we can get results quickly so we can keep making decisions and move forward.

MM: What’s an example of a tricky propagation challenge you were proud to figure out?

AL: One big one was Platanus Exclamation! It took five years of trialing until I cracked the recipe. I don’t know how many people propagate that one in TC, but it was a hard one to get going. I’m really proud of how beautiful and well it grows now.

MM: What are your biggest challenges?

AL: As a manager, it’s communication. In tissue culture, we don’t just touch a plant one time and harvest it. We’re touching that plant every two months. It’s important to make sure everyone is on the same page so we can have the plant ready at the right time.

MM: What are your hobbies?

AL: Outside of work, I love camping with my family. My kids are in high school. My daughter is a sophomore, and my son is a senior. We kayak in the summer, and we have a hobby farm. I have goats, sheep, donkeys and chickens.

This article appeared in the April 2025 issue of Greenhouse Management magazine.

Matt McClellan is editor of sister publication Nursery Management magazine. Contact him at mmcclellan@gie.net.