People Make a Difference

Jim McBratney, president of Sylvan Nursery, uses technology to help run the business, but puts his faith in personal service. Massachusetts-based Sylvan Nursery is certainly progressive in its production practices from its PDAs to its wind turbines. While the machines are welcome additions, the nursery upholds the traditional belief that its personnel are the lifeblood of the company.

“We are fortunate to have an abundance of equipment, but it can never be forgotten that it is the people who drive the equipment to do the work,” said Jim McBratney, president of Sylvan Nursery.

Sylvan Nursery is a rewholesaler with customers throughout New England and the Mid-Atlantic. The nursery sells B&B and containerized landscape plants including perennials, trees, shrubs, grasses, heather and heath. Sizes range from 2-inch pots up to a 7-inch caliper tree.

Sylvan Nurseries believes in keeping employees well trained — there are 16 Massachusetts Certified Horticulturists on the sales staff.
 
The nursery’s commitment to its employees initiates impeccable customer service. An employee nicknamed the town crier meets and greets every incoming customer to triage their order with the goal of tailoring that customer to the best salesperson.
 
“Our mantra is to sell only ‘Sylvantastic’ plants with the best service possible,” McBratney said. “We believe in selling the truth and leading people to the right plants for their needs.”
 
Sylvan fosters a cohesive environment between departments. Communication can be difficult during busy times, but all the departments are located in the same building and no one is squirreled away in an office or cubicle.
 
“There are no walls between the desks so everyone can hear each other think out loud. This may seem archaic, but it’s a great way to share information quickly,” he said.
Communication between management and employees is critical, especially during a tough economy.
 
“Keeping our team feeling certain within this uncertain economic period is not easy. We know that the business climate has changed and we’re faced with some period of difficulty for the days and months to come,” McBratney said. “Having people know you have their best interests in mind when tough decisions have to be made is crucial. They can’t be comfortable within your company unless you speak of the matter truthfully, while making necessary fiscal adjustments openly.”

High-tech help
PDAs support communication between Sylvan employees and improve customer service.
 Inventory control is critical for a nursery like Sylvan that grows such a wide range of sizes and types of plants.
 
“Our inventory fluctuates tremendously, so the PDAs will make the sales experience for our customers faster and more efficient,” he said.
 
The Sylvan sales team is required to go out for at least an hour and physically look at the plants. The PDAs help with this process too, because the team can make notes about a certain crop.
 
And when a plant comes in on a truck, it’s given a GPS coordinate which is recorded on the PDA.
 
“No matter where you are in the nursery, you know exactly what plant you sold and where it’s located. And by the time a customer gets to the office to sign a sales slip, it’s already printed and ready for them to go,” McBratney said.

Conservation commitments
Water conservation is a major component of Sylvan Nursery. Water is recycled at each growing location and all water is collected in catch basins. At the main farm, the irrigation system was moved underground. The 24- and 18-inch cement pipes are much like the ones a municipality would use. The underground system alleviates a lot of silt in the water and reduces erosion.
 
“Putting the irrigation underground allowed us to improve our space utilization rather than maneuvering around irrigation pipe,” McBratney said. “It also allowed us to upgrade our system, making it much more efficient in how we applied water throughout the nursery.”
 
Other elements support water conservation including the placement and spacing of plants, using bark mulch in the B&B areas and using drip irrigation. Routine irrigation procedures include hand watering only when necessary, turning off the water during th     e hottest time of day to cut down on evaporation losses, continually searching for leaks and operating individual shut-offs on the nozzles to regulate flow.

Saving energy
Energy conservation is also important at Sylvan Nursery. To take advantage of good wind speed in the region, the nursery uses three 10-kilowatt wind turbines. The Bergy turbines produce 10kw of electricity at wind speeds of 28 mph. Two turbines are on 120-foot lattice towers and the other is on an 80-foot monopole.
 
The nursery uses three 10kw wind turbines.
The turbines don’t produce enough electricity to supply power to the entire nursery, but they do offset some energy use and decreases the grower’s fuel dependence.
 
“All three turbines are on net-metering systems, which means the power we produce and we don’t use goes back into the grid and turns the meter backward. But that doesn’t happen very often,” he said.
 
All three are connected to the facilities they power: the first one powers the main office and supplies 10 percent of that building’s electricity needs; the second is connected to the maintenance facility and supplies 40 percent of its electrical needs; and the third is connected to a shed that houses a potting facility, which supplies about 50 percent of its power.
 
Sylvan used a Massachusetts Technology Collaborative grant and a couple of federal grants to help pay for the turbines. But the grower had to pay for the systems up front before receiving the grant money.
 
“If I had to do it over again, having worked the grant system, I would have installed one large turbine instead of three smaller ones,” he said.
 
Sylvan’s first turbine is augmented by solar panels, and solar is used to power the deer fences and some submersible pumps. But putting up solar on a grand scale “is a serious venture, and we’ve only thought about it, not actually planned for it,” he said.

For more: Sylvan Nursery, (508) 636-4573; www.sylvannursery.com.