Nursery Industry Suffering in Southwest Florida

The palm tree industry isn’t what it was at the height of Lee County, Fla.’s, home-building frenzy three years ago.

But people looking for an edge to sell their houses, and those who find themselves at least temporarily unable to move, are providing customers for palms and the other tropical foliage that make a house a home in Southwest Florida.

And gardeners and landscape contractors alike say plants are selling at bargain prices as growers seek to sell the inventory they planted in more optimistic times.

Still, sales overall are down in the business, said Michael Allen, president and general manager of Soaring Eagle Nursery on Pine Island, Fla., a major supplier of landscaping plants in Lee County.

“Well, it’s been a challenge,” he said. “We are tied to real estate to a large part, so we’ve certainly felt the effects. The quantity of material shipped has certainly decreased. It hasn’t dried up. Although I think the industry relied heavily over the past few years on new construction as a driving force, we’re not completely relying on it.”

The fall-off in home building has been dramatic. In September, builders in unincorporated Lee County pulled 32 permits for single-family homes, tying the record of December 2007; Cape Coral had just seven, a record low.

There are no local statistics available but landscaping is a big business nationwide with $15.2 billion in sales nationally. Florida, which accounts for 11 percent of that, is one of the industry’s hotbeds.

In Lee County, the business has shifted toward helping people enhance their homes for their own pleasure or to sell, said landscape contractor Mike Burke, owner of Cape Coral-based All Shades of Green, who learned his trade growing up on the family farm in County Mayo, Ireland.

Often, he said, “They’ve got to sell a house and they call me for advice. I advise them to clean things up, put on fresh mulch, make it look good for a little money.”

Beyond that, Burke said, it can be cost effective to pay for a professional job. “If we came in and did a bit of trimming and a cleanup, it’s well under $1,000.”

Those who are more ambitious might spend as much as a couple thousand to enhance the look of their properties, he said.

It’s money well spent, Burke said: For a house thats yard has been allowed to deteriorate, “The potential buyer in his mind will take off $5,000 or $6,000 from the value, thinking it’ll cost that much to make it look good.”

Burke’s daughter, Fiona Finn of The Finn Realty Team in Fort Myers, Fla., used to work for her father’s business and still pays close attention to landscaping detail when preparing a home for sale.

Beyond general spiffing up, she said, some strategic nice touches can go a long way — just as well, because most sellers these days are strapped for cash.

“I like color,” she said, which can mean putting some potted flowers near the door.

For those doing a more elaborate remodeling for themselves, prices have come down over the past few years as demand has fallen off and supplies increased.

“Over the past few years the market was so good that a lot of landowners who might have been doing citrus or something else switched to doing plants or woody trees,” Allen said. “That’s now coming to market. Prices have come down for a lot of items.

There are a lot of deals to be had out there. We and all our competitors have cut prices.”

Since the building boom ended, Burke said, in general, “I’d say prices are down 25 percent.”

Sometimes the savings are even more striking, he said. For example, “I could get a 10-foot potted palm tree that was $350 and now down to $250.”

As a result, said avid home landscaper Warren Bush of Cape Coral, it’s not prohibitive to do some fairly major improvements. “For a royal palm it’s about $150 for one 6 feet, a starter palm, and you can get a cabbage palm for under a hundred. You don’t have to buy a 40-foot oak tree and plant it in your yard.”

But the high end of the business is still going strong, said Mayer Berg, 57, who with his wife Sharon moved here from Minnesota and bought Riverland Nursery & Landscaping in east Fort Myers a year and a half ago.

“We’ve really refocused toward the upper end of the retail side,” he said. “That market has not been as adversely affected. If you’re living in a $2 million house on the river, you’re not as adversely affected.”

People often ask for a yard that needs less water because the drought of the past year and subsequent watering restrictions have made it harder to maintain plants that can’t take dry conditions as well, Berg said. “People are coming to us and saying, ‘We know there’s less water to work with.’ ”

That doesn’t have to mean a sparse look, he said. “It’s not that you don’t use high-water plants, you just don’t use many of them.”

Choosing the wrong plants can be an expensive mistake if the plants can’t do well here, he said. “A year after people paid $40,000 or $50,000 for their landscaping, we’re ripping it out.”

Where’s the landscaping market headed now?

“It’s hard to prognosticate,” Allen said. “It’s an up-or-down roller coaster. I’d expect the market’s hit bottom, it’s going to head up this winter or next spring. Right now, everybody’s trying to move the same materials.”

 The industry is at the mercy of natural events as well as business cycles, he noted.

One of the biggest unknowns, for example, is Florida’s sometimes violent climate.

“If a hurricane hits you directly, it’s a real setback,” Allen said. “You’re out of business a little while, while you reassess. A hurricane not hitting you but hitting other areas can potentially have some economic benefit. As trees get damaged in the landscape, they at some point get replaced.”