Committed to quality

Sustaining a business through good times and bad is part of the lifecycle of a generations-old operation, and at Toms Creek Nursery & Landscaping in Farmer, N.C., a tradition of staying the course has resulted in a rich, evolving legacy.

Ovie Henson started Toms Creek during the Great Depression, and current owner Brandon Vaughn, her great-grandson, has learned how to run a lean, quality-focused business because he’s “a product of the recession.” Like many design/build outfits in this region, strip malls and ongoing development in the 1990s reeled in what seemed as endless business. Toms Creek was installing large entrance landscapes to neighborhoods and model homes, using its own nursery stock grown on the 450 acres of farm land the family has owned for nearly a century. 

“Then, it was like a spigot turned off,” Vaughn says. “The work was gone and literally all we did through the recession was fix jobs that other people messed up. Repair is what kept us going.”

Toms Creek has always aimed to be the landscaping design/build firm people call when they want the best in the area, Vaughn says. That focus on quality made a difference during tough times. “During the 1990s boom, it wasn’t, ‘Can you get here and do a good job?’ but ‘Can you get here?’” Vaughn says of the mass-production mentality.

As a result, many residential properties had landscaping problems, Vaughn says. And even in a recession, clients would reach out to Toms Creek to fix an issue that was the product of a previous sub-par contractor. “We were repairing shoddy irrigation systems and doing other repairs on properties for three years,” Vaughn says.

That way of running the business was a big departure from the $2.3 million in revenues from landscape design, installation, maintenance and the nursery the company had realized in 2008. Almost instantly in 2009, Toms Creek was down to $500,000 in revenues. But some things did not change. The owners held on to their people and the nursery in spite of a severe decrease in sales. “When no one was building houses, no one was buying plants,” Vaughn says.

“But we are quite committed to the nursery because, for one, it’s a lifestyle choice. It’s where we live and the people who work there have been employees for the long-term,” he adds.

Secondly, Toms Creek Landscaping is the largest customer of the nursery, and plant installation jobs can be quite profitable. Now with a diverse service mix, Toms Nursery has quadrupled revenues in the last five years and is on pace to match where it was before the economic fallout. Half of the business is design/build, while the remaining half is divided between mostly residential maintenance and the nursery.

“The biggest key to our success is that we have always done everything we can to meet or beat expectations,” Vaughn says, adding that some residents have hired Toms Creek to do the landscaping for several of their homes over the years. As they move on, they bring their favorite design/installation firm with them. “That makes you feel good.”

Diversifying the business.

Vaughn remembers the story. His grandparents were really distressed about adding a landscaping division to their family nursery. As horticulturists with college degrees, they felt that landscaping was a step down, in a sense. (This was, of course, before the industry’s reputation had elevated to today’s level, Vaughn says.)

He jokes, “They said landscapers were nothing but drunks and thieves.” They had no intention of moving into installation, but they did in 1976 and grossed $57,000 that year, which was thought to be a nice chunk of change. “Now, we need to do more than that in a month,” Vaughn says.

Vaughn’s mother, Melinda, earned a horticultural landscape design degree from North Carolina State University and took the business to new levels. She and her husband, Steve Vaughn, developed a team and soon traveled throughout the Carolinas and to Virginia to complete jobs.\When Brandon Vaughn and his twin brother Aaron entered the business as teenagers, they found a niche in maintenance. “We started mowing after school and on weekends,” says Vaughn, an NC State alum like his mother, with a degree in agricultural business management. Aaron pursued a career in industrial engineering and contributes to the family business today by helping with systems, including creating an inventory software program.

During the recession, maintenance helped sustain the core business: the nursery and installation. And, it also afforded Toms Creek the ability – though it was not easy – to retain its people. And that was important, Vaughn says.

“We have a very dedicated crew, and we are not like others who hire a lot of seasonal help,” he says. “We have always been really committed to them. And while it might not have been the best financial decision [to keep everyone on board], we have had the same group of guys in the nursery for 25 years, and most of the landscape crewmembers are at least 10-year veterans.”

If a worker left, he or she was not replaced. But otherwise, Toms Creek kept its payroll going strong during the leanest time from 2008 to 2010. Meanwhile, the installation business focused on installing plantings from nursery stock grown on the family-owned land.

Also, the company maintained a modest debt load and continues to operate this way. “You don’t know when [business] could turn off again like it did,” Vaughn says. “No one here saw that coming.”

The installation repair jobs kept some revenue flowing, and then as the economy began to loosen up in the past couple of years, larger residential jobs started coming in. People who have known Toms Creek all along began calling for the projects that were, perhaps, put on hold. Today, the company’s design/installation business includes high-end residential projects with budgets in the $100,000 neighborhood.

And, the modest maintenance department helps take care of properties and serves as a “business card on the street,” Vaughn says. Toms Creek is out in front of people in the community because of its ongoing work on properties.

Plus, maintaining properties that Toms Creek installs allows the company to monitor the quality of the landscape—and, in turn, protect the firm’s reputation as a premiere provider in the area, Vaughn says. “We had a project where we installed a 23-foot tall crepe myrtle in a back yard, and the next spring another maintenance company trimmed it down to 6 feet tall with their chainsaws and just ruined it,” Vaughn says.

“Maintenance makes us look better as an installation company because we take care of the properties we do,” he says.

The nursery is not growing, but it is steadfast, and Toms Creek grows all of its basic plant stock on the land. Farming plants is part of Toms Creek culture and, as Vaughn says, a lifestyle that the family chooses. Meanwhile, his mother is still involved in the business as a landscape designer and the legacy is thriving. “I’m looking forward to being back to what I consider ‘normal’ and we continue to get more professional as an industry, and as a company,” Vaughn says. “The future looks promising.”