WAKEFIELD, Neb. - Bonnie Plants, a wholesale supplier of vegetable, herb and flower transplants, recently selected Wakefield for one of its newest nursery locations.
Bonnie Plant Farm was founded in Bullock County, Ala., in 1918 by Livingston and Bonnie Paulk. Over the years, the company grew and today has 62 greenhouse production facilities and 11 cross-docking stations in 38 states. Bonnie Plants has 450 sales representatives who service more than 13,000 accounts throughout the United States and Toronto, Canada.
Station manager at the new Wakefield nursery, Adam Floyd, said the company supplies seedling plants to large retail stores throughout the area.
"We're a wholesale plant company," Floyd said. "We have a nationwide agreement to service every Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Lowes, Home Depot, Pamida, Bomgaars and Ace Hardware in the United States, including Alaska."
People are also reading…
Floyd said the company's sales have continued to grow despite the overall poor economy of recent years.
"Eight years ago our sales were about $8 million," Floyd said. "Last year, we sold $210 million. So we've grown exponentially over the past decade."
The facility in Wakefield recently opened with two large nursery buildings. Floyd said the bulk of their production will be tomato and pepper plants.
"If you buy a tomato plant at Wal-Mart, you most likely bought it from us," Floyd said. He added the company also grows a variety of herb plants such as oregano, basil and sage.
Once the Wakefield nursery is in operation, Floyd said it hopes to employ about 40 people. Right now the facility has two nursery houses.
"Next year we'll expand to be twice as big and build two more houses," Floyd said. "Then we'll have about 50 or 55 employees."
Each building has five separate greenhouse bays under one roof for growing plants giving a capacity of 40,000 trays of plants.
"Our goal here is to grow 120,000 trays," Floyd said.
The greenhouses, located on a portion of the new 40-acre Wakefield Industrial Parksouth and east of the city, are of the latest design and feature blowers that pump warm air from inside the greenhouse into a space under the roof to melt any snow during the winter. Floyd said the design is relatively new and is working well.
The Bonnie Plants facility in Wakefield receives small plants just a few days old, called plugs, from the main nursery in Alabama. A machine in one of the buildings at the facility takes a mixture of soil and fertilizer and automatically fills trays containing small containers with just the right amount of soil and fertilizer. Those plugs are then planted in the three-ounce containers.
Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman attended the groundbreaking ceremony for the Bonnie Plants facility in June of last year and lauded Wakefield's economic development efforts, saying he was sure residents would supply Bonnie Plants with employees who work hard and take pride in what they do.
Last April, the Department of Economic Development presented Wakefield with a $130,000 Community Development Block Grant to help fund a street leading to and from the greenhouses. The city of Wakefield contributed an additional $125,000 match.
Floyd said Bonnie Plants wanted to open a nursery in the general area and selected Wakefield for several reasons.
"The city of Wakefield has been very proactive in attracting the business here. We could have easily been outside Lincoln or Fremont."
He said one of the factors in selecting Wakefield was the available and qualified labor force. "We've had an overwhelming response from people applying for jobs here."
The future looks bright for the new Bonnie Plants nursery and like the seedlings it produces it hopes to continue to grow.
"Our goal is to have $1.4 million in sales," Lloyd said.
