It's called urban sprawl, and Lake County nurseries are in the midst of it. For years, landscape nurseries have been growing trees and shrubs on hundreds of acres throughout Lake County.
But as development spreads, the question is: How long can the county's largest agricultural business hold out before it gets pushed farther west? Bob Dolibois, executive vice president for the nonprofit American Nursery and Landscape Association based in Washington, D.C., said it is just a matter of time.
"There's no question agriculture in general continues to struggle with the expansion of the suburbs," Dolibois said. "And certainly nurseries are a part of that."
Richard Peterson, general manager of Volo's 44-acre Perricone Nursery and Garden Center on Route 120 and Fisher Road, is no stranger to this trend. Skyrocketing land values and developmental pressures caused his nursery to move west once before.
In 1996, growth around his Northbrook site along Dundee Road found the business boxed in by houses, forcing the small landscaping and nursery operation, started in the late 1970s, to move to Volo.
"Large trucks and machinery moving in and out of the site didn't mix well with the housing development and synagogue next to our site," he said.
Today, as developers eye the routes 12 and 120 corridor, Peterson said his business could be in the midst of yet another developmental storm.
"There will probably be one point in time we would want to sell (again)," Petersen said.
Perricone is not alone. Other nurseries throughout Lake County have found themselves surrounded by urban growth. They have sold land and moved west, where land is cheaper and readily available.
Bill Sims, owner of Rolling Hills Nursery located on the north end of Buffalo Grove, said the family once owned 70 acres filled with trees and shrubs but now are down to 6 at Pet Lane and Aptakisic Road. The Sims family sold a large chunk of its land more than a decade ago to make way for a school and houses.
"We couldn't afford to grow materials here anymore," said Sims, who took over his father's nursery in the 1980s. "The property just got too expensive."
Sims moved the nursery west, to 1,000 acres in Harvard. "There are a lot of nurseries moving west," Sims said.
Growers can buy land farther west for as little as $5,000 an acre, compared to $300,000 an acre in parts of Buffalo Grove, Sims said. Lake County's most recent nursery to move is the Fiore Nursery, which moved from Lake Forest to Wadsworth in 2002.
In 1988, the Fiore family sold all but 2.5 acres of its 75-acre Lake Forest location to make way for homes.
As nurseries in Lake County begin to diminish, development has not been all bad for their owners, according to Greg Koeppen, spokesman for the Lake County Farm Bureau. Indeed, the demand for services from new subdivisions and business parks has led to nurseries becoming the largest agricultural employer in Lake County.
"Development has created more (nursery) jobs than we have ever seen before," Koeppen said.
Nurseries are not just suppliers of trees and bushes, Koeppen said. The business has evolved into more of a service industry, providing lawn care and maintenance, as well as products.