This Is A Hold Up!: Holding Yards

Contractors who derive the vast majority of their sales from lawn mowing have to deal with intense price competition, droughts, employee turnover and any number of other operational challenges. But at least they don’t have to deal with ordering, receiving, handling and transporting plant material. (And that’s before ever having to put a single plant in the ground.)

In an attempt to simplify the handling of nursery stock material that is slated for eventual planting, contractors have long dedicated areas of their property for the storage of any plants that have been purchased in advance of their scheduled planting or have even been bought without any scheduled planting date in mind. These areas, which have come to be known as holding yards, can offer a host of benefits to contractors, but they bring a fair number of challenges as well.

WHAT GOES IN. The conventional wisdom regarding what plant material goes in holding yards is fairly obvious after talking to just a few contractors, the vast majority of whom are in agreement about most of the preferred practices for managing a holding yard.

"The first thing our holding yard includes is plants that are sold and will be planted on jobs during the current dig cycle," explained Dan Fish, purchasing agent, Western Dupage Landscaping, Naperville, Ill. "For us, that means we have to have a lot of the material that is going to be planted through July in stock because once our vendors dig the plants they don’t want to sit on them as inventory and maintain them.

"Then there’s material that is stocked because of horticultural windows, like birch and red bud trees," Fish continued. "We can only dig those plants at a certain time of year, so we may have to stock one year’s worth of those plants so we can have them available and plant them throughout the season."

Sometimes buying plants – so long as they are the right plants – with the intention of putting them in the holding yard makes sense financially.

"We’ve negotiated with some of our vendors to deliver plants for free so long as the orders are of a minimum size," related Hugh Kramber, president, Outdoor Environments, Savage, Minn. "So if we have extra room on the truck from an order we might as well fill that in with materials we know we’ll use during the season. The other approach we might take is to combine a bunch of smaller orders that might have to wait in the yard so we can avoid shipping costs.

"We used to bring in a lot more material for our holding yard, but we’ve gone after a part of the market that has let us get away from being so price conscious all of the time," Kramber continued, adding that he buys material from Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa and the West Coast.

In addition, contractors have to be sensitive to the design preferences of the landscape architects or designers they work with.

"I’m not our designer, but I do purchase our plants and I know designers have a mentality that they really want to make a statement with their projects," related Mike Aquilino, president, Outdoor Pride Landscaping, Manchester, N.H. "When we see these unique products that are available we’ll buy them in order to ensure that we have them available whenever we might need them, even if that means we have to baby-sit them for a month or two."

Finally, contractors also like to look for "special buys" that aren’t available all of the time or plants that are discounted enough that maintaining them in the holding yard is worth the hassle.

"We look for these deals at the end of the year, especially if we have more cash available than we expected to, and then we’ll buy these plants and heel them in for the winter," commented Aquilino.

WILL STAY IN. One of the primary challenges associated with a holding yard is caring for the plants that are kept there, particularly if they aren’t sent out to jobs as quickly as was planned.

"We only want to keep material in the holding yard for two to three weeks at the most because no matter what you do to care for it, a plant never looks as good as it does on the day when it comes into the holding yard," related Drew St. John, president, St. John & Associates, Hattiesburg, Miss.

While plants are in his holding yard, St. John keeps them organized by variety.

"We also have an area of the holding yard that is sectioned off so plants that are going to be used on jobs the next day can be pulled from rest of the material, marked appropriately and organized by job," St. John added. "And we have our holding yard irrigation system timed to operate at night so the crews can come in first thing in the morning, load up the truck and head out to the job."

"We have a well on site that we use to keep the plants watered," said Fish, adding that Western Dupage uses different irrigation methods for different plants. "We soak the plants on a daily basis, the bigger material is irrigated with drip irrigation, the ground covers are hand watered and the shrubs are on timed risers."

"Our construction manager and an employee from the horticulture department monitors our holding yard for a variety of insect or disease problems, and any plants that get infected are set aside from the rest and treated," noted Kramber.

"Disease in the holding yard is a concern, but plants that come in healthy and don’t stay in the yard too long will remain healthy," added Fish. "We’re not a grower, and we’re not doing the plant any favors by keeping it above ground, but proper spacing and watering will keep a plant healthy until we get it out of the yard."

"One of our maintenance crews spends a couple of hours each week in the holding yard doing some weeding and pruning, and we’ll fertilize the holding yard or apply pesticides at the same time that we’re weeding and pruning at the properties we maintain," commented St. John.

Another issue for contractors to address is how to handle balled-and-burlapped plant stock, although there seems to be a clear consensus among contractors interviewed.

"We don’t plant or mulch over any of the balled-and-burlapped materials in our yard," shared Fish. "We keep the plants above ground because our concern is that a heeled-in plant can root into the mulch, and then a situation similar to digging the plant arises.

"We would just as soon have the balls air pruned and not have the root mass growing out of the ball and force us to cut it off or dig too wide of a hole to plant that plant," he continued.

Aquilino noted that he only heels in plants left in the holding yard at the end of the season, and then he’ll dig them himself for use the next year. Fish cautioned contractors to be realistic in doing so, however.

"If a plant goes into the ground fresh for the winter, it will come out pretty fresh," he recognized. "But you’re better off just throwing tired plant material away because nothing happens over the winter that miraculously helps plants come out of the ground looking so much better than they did when they were planted."

But one downside to the holding yard concept for Aquilino is that plants in the yard represent money spent, so contractors at smaller firms may be more concerned about losing this material.

"We have an employee come in here over the weekend to make sure the irrigation system is still working, and that employee is usually me," Aquilino related. "And last fall we had some damaging winds from the hurricanes that came up the coast, so we moved some of the plant material inside our warehouse and laid the other ones down and covered them up to protect them."