Growing a reputation

The Tankard family has been in the nursery business a long time. David Tankard founded David’s Nursery in 1977, after leaving Tankard Nurseries, which was founded by his father and uncle in 1933. He took the lessons he learned to the new location, a 550 acre farm located in Exmore, Va.

David’s two sons, Dave Tankard, Jr. and Van Tankard, are the current owners and operators of David’s Nursery. David Tankard is still active in the business, “keeping an eye on things,” as his son Dave Jr. says, and David’s wife Suzanne is the company’s CFO.

Dave Jr. and Van handle day-to-day nursery operations, with Van primarily involved in the production side and Dave Jr. primarily involved in the sales side. However, Dave Jr. says their roles frequently overlap depending on the needs of the nursery throughout the year.

“I like being outside and dealing with the plants,” Dave Jr. says. “That’s my favorite thing. But the people are good too,” he says, laughing.

The key to the company’s success has been repeat customers. The nursery’s motto is “Our reputation grows,” and its employees work hard to provide service that causes customers to come back, and tell their friends. The owners trade on their reputation’s stock as much as the quality of their nursery stock.

“Our customers are almost all repeat customers who have been with us for a lot of years,” Dave Jr. says. “They’re good people to deal with.”

Dave Jr. says those customers come back for two reasons: quality and service.

The process of developing a high-quality plant starts with plant selection. David’s Nursery does about 80 to 85 percent of its own propagation. Dave Jr. says the nursery used to propagate 100 percent of its own material, but with the trademark brands, there are things the nursery can’t propagate in-house now.

“We take a real good look at it every winter,” Dave Jr. says. “Every winter we take a look at the numbers of what we sold the prior year, and adjust our numbers then. But throughout the year, if something’s looking hotter right before we propagate, we do look at all the numbers again. Everything is addressed once, then it’s all addressed again a second time as we actually start.”

David’s Nursery grows more than 250 cultivars of evergreen, deciduous and perennial plants. Dave says their specialty is pot-in-pot grown woody plants ready for the landscape. These shrubs are sold in 10, 15, and 25 gallon containers. Different plants are propagated at different times throughout the year, and adjustments can be made right until the propagation begins, if the nursery expects demand to be higher or lower on a particular plant.

“We can adjust our numbers, not major adjustments, but we can adjust on the fly,” Dave Jr. says. “We don’t need any lead time for those, because we can always get cuttings off our stock of young plants. The thing that does require some lead time is watering in patented plants. In the summer, Knock Out roses and hydrangeas are the two biggest patented plants that we sell. Those you have to plan out a little bit in advance. Now that the nursery industry is picking up a little bit, those plants are selling out more quickly.”

Currently, the nursery is using about 375 of its 550 acres for production. Dave says that 175 acres are being used for B&B, 125 acres are being used for pot-in-pot, and 75 acres are being used for the nursery’s above-ground container operation.

The nursery’s normal shipping area is Virginia to New Hampshire, but it does send several trucks each year far out as Maine, Michigan and Kansas. Dave Jr. says the nursery ships to every state in the Northeast, every week. The wholesale nursery has retail customers in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Vermont. But only about 20 percent of its customers are garden centers.

“It’s a mix,” Dave says. “We do sell straight to garden centers, and to landscapers and rewholesalers. It’s probably 20 percent garden centers now. And the rest is divided 40 percent to big landscapers that have yards we bring it right in, and 40 percent to rewholesale yards.”

The nursery keeps about 70 employees throughout the year, and staffs up to about 90 at its peak. Dave Jr. says the nursery keeps most of its workforce employed through the winter and has very few layoffs. “It’s mostly just attrition through the fall and into the winter, and we try to find people again as we get into spring,” he says.

David’s Nursery is a member of many industry organizations, including AmericanHort, the Virginia Nursery & Landscape Association, Pennsylvania Nursery & Landscape Association, Maryland Nursery & Landscape Association, International Plant Propagators Society, and the Eastern Shore of Virginia Nurserymen’s Association.