I learned it by growing plants, managing crews, running nurseries, fixing problems, building systems, and being responsible for the results.
I started in the green industry doing the work itself and built my career through growing, propagation, production, and nursery management before eventually leading entire nursery operations.
Along the way, my responsibilities expanded from growing plants to managing labor, inventory, shipping, sales, budgets, technology, facilities, customer experience, and the managers responsible for making all of it work together.
That progression shaped the way I look at a business today. A production problem is rarely just a production problem. Labor affects inventory. Inventory affects sales. Sales affects production. Systems, people, and decisions have to work together for the operation to perform.
Across nursery leadership roles, I've focused on turning operational improvements into measurable business results.
The best improvements happen when you understand how the entire nursery works together, not when you optimize one department in isolation.
I look at nursery operations as a connected system. Production decisions affect labor. Labor affects cost and timing. Inventory affects sales. Sales affects production planning. And all of it eventually shows up in the financial results.
That means improvement starts by understanding what is actually happening in the operation, using data where it helps, and then fixing the processes that are creating waste, mistakes, unnecessary cost, or lost opportunity.
The goal isn't to make a nursery more complicated. It's to build better systems, give managers and employees better information, and create an operation that can keep improving so improvement doesn't depend on ownership pushing every department forward.
I've had the opportunity to share what I've learned through industry leadership, speaking, education, and publications. The focus has stayed the same: practical ways to improve nursery operations and prepare horticulture businesses for what's next.
The goal isn't to make your nursery operate like a corporation. It's to give your people better direction, better information, and better systems to work with.
Throughout my career, I've seen the advantage larger nursery operations have when they can dedicate people and resources to planning, data, technology, process improvement, and management development.
Independent nurseries face many of the same operational challenges, but those responsibilities often fall on owners and managers who are already running the business every day. Hiring a full executive team, analyst, or systems department usually isn't practical.
That's why I started DPC Horticulture: to give independent nursery businesses access to experienced operational leadership, practical systems, and better tools without adding layers of permanent overhead.
Whether you're trying to solve a specific problem or build a stronger operation for the next stage of growth, it starts with understanding where you are today and where you want to go.