Champions of recycling

Steve Davis is general manager of Tampa Wholesale Nursery in Dover, Fla.
The Davis family, proprietors of Tampa Wholesale Nursery in Dover, Fla., have been conservation advocates for more than three decades. It wasn’t regulation that pushed the family to adopt best management practices or water conservation, but an understanding of the balance between man and Mother Nature.
 
In 2005, the nursery began using recycled water from a neighbor, Tampa Bay Fisheries. It’s one of the largest seafood packaging companies in the United States and it’s just a mile from the nursery. The plant produces about 1.7 million pounds of seafood a week and uses approximately 200,000 gallons of water daily.

While it has its own wastewater treatment plant and spray fields, business growth prompted the company to seek additional ways of disposing of excess water. Tampa Bay Fisheries began exploring a partnership with Tampa Wholesale Nursery.

From fish to foliage
As the water leaves the seafood processing plant it goes through a screening process before going into Tampa Bay Fisheries’ wastewater treatment plant. From there it flows into a treatment pond where it is held until it is pumped through a mile-long pipeline into Tampa Wholesale Nursery’s two-acre reservoir. Since implementing the process, the amount of water Tampa Wholesale Nurseries draws from the aquifer has decreased by at least 40 percent.
 
The nursery uses an average of 2 million gallons of recycled water per month, said Steve Davis, general manager at Tampa Wholesale Nursery. Since 2005, the nursery has used some 90 million gallons of recycled water.
 

Tampa Wholesale Nursery Founded: By Roy Davis in 1961 as Davis Landscaping Co. In 1978 the landscape company was phased out to become Tampa Wholesale Nursery. In 1980 the family founded Big Tree Nursery. Location: Dover, Fla. Crops: Trees, shrubs, groundcover and ornamental grasses from 1 gallon up to 65 gallons. Primary customer: Landscape contractors throughout the Southeast. Awards: Environmental Leadership Award in 2006 from the Florida Department of Agriculture.

“That’s a significant amount we’re not pumping from the aquifer,” he said. “It’s good for the environment and it’s good for business.”
 
About once a month the nursery checks the salt levels in the recycled water. The fishery has also upgraded its system since the project started in 2005.
 
“Tampa Bay Fisheries improved their reverse osmosis unit and did a lot of upgrades to their treatment site,” Davis said. “It improved the water quality even more.”
 
Only a handful of plants don’t perform well with the recycled water’s higher salt content – loropetalum and boxwood in particular – but almost three-quarters of the nursery is irrigated with the recycled water.

The conservation continues
Back in the 1970s, Tampa Wholesale Nursery was one of the first nurseries to incorporate low-volume irrigation, greatly reducing water usage. The nursery also uses collected rainwater and irrigation runoff.
 
Damaged concrete lintels from a local manufacturer are used as gutters that edge the beds. The lintels also serve as posts for frost protection.
 
The nursery mixes its own potting soil using pine bark and other byproducts of pulpwood mills, as well as composted yard waste. The plastic pots are reused by the nursery, and it offers a credit to customers who return them, reducing solid waste that would normally go into the landfill. 
 
For more: Tampa Wholesale Nursery, www.tampawholesalenursery.com.
 
The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services’ Division of Marketing and Development contributed to this article; www.florida-agriculture.com.