Bay Area BusinessWoman
www.babwnews.com
March, 2006
Perennial Success for Hardy Entrepreneur
—By Kathleen Archambeau
Annies's Annuals started out started out quite by accident. Annie Hayes worked for the Berkeley Horticulture and Nursery in the '80s with a woman Hayes called "a walking plant encyclopedia. She took me to her one bedroom apartment in Oakland and I couldn't believe what I saw: under fluorescent lights, this lady had seeds growing everywhere!" Then she took Hayes up five flights of stairs to the rooftop of her building, where she was growing small plants in 4-inch pots.
"That day, I knew what I wanted to do with my life," recalls Hayes. "I went home and planted seeds in my backyard. I said to myself, 'Oh my god, I can totally do this!'" But after two weeks, not a single seed had sprouted — except in the one area that Jupiter, her cat, had naughtily walked over. There began the secret of Annie's Annuals: you can grow plants from seed, but you must tap the seeds down.
If Jupiter hadn't walked all over Hayes's seed pots, she would have given up the idea. Instead, in 1990, she started the improbable — a two-and-a half acre "growing" nursery in Richmond, a town she loves and has lived in for a quarter century.
"I love the people. They're not pretentious," she says. "You can get to know them and build community. I raised my son here and now he's 30 years old. I'm the youngest head of household on my block and I've been here 25 years!"
Though Hayes has enjoyed modest success and, certainly, longevity, it's a tough business. In a Home Depot mass market world, growing plants from seeds is nearly a dying art. The diehards appreciate the real horticultural experience of nurturing plants from seed and enjoy watching them sprout, grow, flower, and die back. Because these plants are not chemically treated and are grown from seed, they tend to be heartier and healthier. Like children who get a lot of outdoor exercise, they can weather the storms of life. Their bodies are sturdy no matter the weather: usually, wind, flood, and sun can kill them.
Yet it takes a certain customer to appreciate the unique varieties and rich panoply of plants Annie's Annuals offers. Visiting Hayes's backyard small business in winter, you would have to have a vivid imagination to envision the color of spring now dormant in the 4-inch pots lined up in drying wood flats. The refreshing part of this horticultural feast is to walk on impeccably clean wheat cloth along wide boulevards of plant-seed flats. Each plant is identified by its Latin name, illuminated with a photograph or colored drawing and further explained by a short write-up of ideal growing, and nurturing conditions and requirements.
That's not all the education one gets in going to Annie's Annuals. There are bunnies and roosters for the kids, plus hand-painted Sesame-Street-like brightly colored signs, gazebos, and picnic areas. The old Radio Flyer red wagons are your transport, and vines and trees host many Bay Area migratory birds: yellow vireos, California blue jays, black and white tuxedoed Phoebes and ruby-throated hummingbirds. Hayes shares her green thumb with schoolchildren and adults, hosting garden parties and festivals.
On brightly colored paper, she color-codes plants for everything from the cutting garden to deer-resistant, drought-tolerant, and fragrant species. She also specifies California natives, South African plants, grasses, easy reseeders, shade lovers, vines, and wildlife plants.
Wildlife plants are further broken down into five categories: those that provide nectar for butterflies; those that provide nectar for hummingbirds; those that host butterfly larvae; those that provide seed or berries for other birds; and those that provide food or habitat for beneficial insects.
Did you know that the Latin name for orchid is delphinium? Or that an Ipomoea vine has a "Wine and Roses" variety, just in time for Valentine's Day? That the common-named Hollyhocks are really easy-reseeder Alceas, along with other easy reseeders including Cosmos, Geranium pyrenaicum, Impatiens, Marigold Harlequin, Nasturtiums, Salvia sclarea and Zinnias? Did you know that New Zealand flax and bush sedge grows well in California median strips? Or that those Aloe varieties are South African?
California Natives make up the longest list of plants at Annie's, and that's no wonder considering the ideal micro-climate of Richmond. The fog line ends at El Cerrito, leaving the Mediterranean climate of warm days and cool nights to Richmond — ideal growing conditions for the Natives.
Annie's Annuals is not just for novice gardeners. In fact, a horticulturist from New Zealand, Marlene Barneveld, who works for the largest privately held landscape maintenance firm in the U.S., recently visited the site and was impressed with the wide variety of plants, the excellent signage, the reasonable and easily decipherable pricing classification, and the impeccable upkeep of the working and growing nursery.
The Perennial Question
For those readers who are novices, the gist of the question of which is which — annual vs. perennial, the answer is:
ï Annuals grow one season, die back after flowering, and must be replanted.
ï Perennials grow more than one season.
Though the name is Annie's Annuals, there are some perennials in the mix.
Employees of Annie's Annuals are friendly and helpful. "I love flowers" Patricia Espinoza, native of Guadalajara and resident of Richmond, enthused. "Annie knows everything. I ask her questions all the time and she helps a lot!" It's no wonder that most of Annie's employees have been with her since the beginning.
But don't kid yourself. It's a tough business. With slim margins and high city-land and labor costs, making a living is very, very difficult. This small, independent nursery is competing with the resources of much larger and more firmly established independents, as well as mass-market commercial enterprises. Most nurseries grow and sell plants, a much more lucrative proposition. "We have to sell billions of $1 somethings just to stay in business," explains Hayes.
Annie's Annuals offers 3,000 varieties in tiny batches, and Hayes is continually searching for new plants. She sells to wholesale and retail nurseries, and is just opening a mail-order catalog distribution channel.
What's the secret of Annie's success? "Stamina. Even if you're terrified as an entrepreneur, keep going. If you can last five years in any business, you become an expert and you're going to make it!" Annie, like most entrepreneurs, loves what she does. "When I get the blues, I go to work. You wouldn't believe this place in the spring. It'll knock your socks off!"
In a business with a typical "throw out" rate of 25 percent, Annie's Annuals hardly throws out a thing. Hayes works hard and then works even harder — at marketing, at matching products with customers' needs, and at mapping out new seeds and new plants. She says that with a sun in Capricorn, a Virgo Rising and Pisces Moon, she has to fight the impulse to just "play in her own garden" all day. But, then, Annie's Annuals is just a large playground for the accidental gardener who started Annie's Annuals in her own backyard!
Kathleen Archambeau is a SF Bay Area author. Her book, Climbing the Corporate Ladder in High Heels, will be released in May and can be pre-ordered at amazon. .
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