Shipping: The final step in getting plants to market

That’s when prime-time selling season has our garden center customers stocking up and our wholesale nursery clients preparing for an influx of landscape contractors. It’s when Loma Vista Nursery ships six days a week — with an extreme sense of urgency that is part of every day.

Most of the intensity falls on the shipping department, as shipping is the final step in a long, diligent process of getting plants to market.

Shipping pros are unsung heroes of the green industry. They must be nimble — ready to adapt on the fly. But they also must be centered on effective standard operating procedures (SOPs) that ensure seamless efficiencies, not only during our “Black Friday” weeks but through the whole season.

Efficiency matters all the time, and especially during Loma Vista Nursery’s busiest four weeks, when swiftly managing small setbacks can make the difference between consistent operations and dominoes falling. Establishing effective SOPs helps shipping manage known disruptions, like lightning or other dangerous weather delays that may impede working outdoors, and adapt quickly to unforeseen challenges.

Adapting on the fly is when a truck breaks down and is out of service for a day — or longer. It’s when a driver calls in sick, the hired truck that was scheduled to arrive at 2 p.m. doesn’t show up until 5 p.m. or a client needs a last-minute addition to their order. Back-up plans allow shipping to pivot and recover quickly so the grower can deliver what was promised.

Consistency over chaos

Shipping is a function of the nursery or greenhouse. It includes selecting plant material and labeling and loading it to be physically transported off the grounds. The goal is always to deliver quality plants in a safe, timely, cost-effective and secure manner.

Distribution is optimizing the flow of plants to the end-user and is a function of our customers. For example, the end-user may be a homeowner buying plants from an independent garden center or a landscape professional taking a jobsite delivery from a wholesale distributor.

SOPs ensure all the details that go into growing plants for our Midwest markets are achieved. SOPs with plans for on the fly help us create a value proposition that is centered on consistency.

Consistency is the antidote to chaos. In our experience, following SOPs helps the shipping team manage stress that inevitably accompanies our “Black Friday” weeks. These same best practices ensure strategies are seamlessly met on customer service throughout the season.

Loma Vista Nursery’s shipping manager and assistant manager are responsible for the department year-round. Our shipping manager continually forecasts the amount of human labor needed to meet demand responsibly within budget. Effectively managing our H-2A labor force allows shipping to get as big as it needs to when demand warrants, and then get very skinny quickly at other times. To ensure an agile workforce, team members are cross-trained in other departments.

Customer-centric culture

Having a great understanding of how everything we do at the nursery affects the customer is key to maintaining a great relationship between shipping and clients. Delivery drivers create the last impression with our customers as they unload their orders. The shipping team is responsible for managing that communication and for training our employee drivers on how best to collaborate with our clients. Hired drivers get an immersive course. However, how they collaborate is not always in our control and can be somewhat of a wild card.

From processing and tagging to loading trucks, having the right culture on the team that ships material can make or break the success of each shipment.

Our nursery’s core value is “we grow plants we are proud of.” We also must ship plants we are proud of and instill that pride in every individual that touches the plants. Many years ago, as I was walking along our shipping dock, I came across a cigarette that had been extinguished in a plant. I was appalled. I could not imagine our customer receiving a product that someone felt could be used as an ashtray. Immediately, we improved SOPs and increased training and accountability throughout the nursery. (We also no longer allow tobacco products in the field.)

Extension of production

Ongoing training also provides customer feedback from the sales team, including sharing photos so if mistakes happen, corrections can be made. Sometimes, this requires updating shipping SOPs and providing additional training. Team members also learn how to recognize plants that may not meet our standards and what to do if this happens.

With certainty, our teams know how to spot various levels of plant quality. One difficult aspect of growing and shipping plants is not getting to see where they end up. Our sales team gets the satisfaction of visiting a customer’s business and seeing our plants on display. Bringing that home through photos and shared feedback with our growers and shippers is paramount to creating a sense of purpose for those teams — and getting buy-in to shipping plants we are proud to ship.

Shipping team members are invested in the financial impacts of the department’s operations and share in the company’s success through our bonus program. Our shipping managers report to our operations manager and work closely with the sales team, quality control manager and growers.

Extension of sales

The shipping department’s function is primarily to deliver experiences that meet or exceed expectations.

This means accurately assembling an order and loading it in a safe and effective way that maximizes available space on the truck. It means protecting plants from damage during transit and routing the truck in the most cost-effective manner, while clearly communicating delivery schedules to clients.

How, when and in what condition plants arrive at a client site will leave an impression about your company’s work and brand. Successful, on-time deliveries with no quality or accuracy issues create value. A delivery with issues or damage in transit erodes value. The shipping department ensures that plants the production team took tremendous care, time and effort to grow — and orders the sales team worked hard to secure — arrive on time and in great shape.

This article appeared in the February 2025 issue of Greenhouse Management magazine under the headline "Load up!"

Lyndsi Oestmann is president of Kansas-based Loma Vista Nursery, a family legacy business founded in 1991 by her father, Mark Clear. Oestmann, who has served on the AmericanHort board of directors, is a regular contributor to sister publication Nursery Management.