Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 9, 1995 TAG: 9507100003
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: F.J. GALLAGHER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
He learned of the plant's history and its many varieties, the diseases and pests that can strike it down and, perhaps most importantly, he learned how to judiciously prune boxwood so the shrubbery will survive winter snows and grow strong and healthy.
As his knowledge grew, so did the number of requests he got from friends to "just come and take a look at my boxwood," he said.
"One day I was out a friend's place pruning his plants, and he told me, 'You know, John, you could make yourself some extra money doing this,''' he said with a laugh. "So I thought about it and decided he was right."
Boxwood, that aristocratic shrub found lining walks to historic buildings and monuments and cultivated at centuries-old plantations, has become one of Virginia's cash crops. Its chief value is to florists who use the evergreen in Christmas wreaths.
And, a small yet highly competitive industry - sometimes marked by bitter infighting - has developed around trafficking in boxwood cuttings.
Boyd has chosen to keep his company, Boxwood Care, small. For the time being, he is running the business part-time, but plans to devote all his energies to it when he retires from his job as a central office technician in Bell Atlantic's switching department.
Boyd, of Roanoke, has developed a list of more than 200 regular customers. Many of them are passionate about their boxwood and belong to the American Boxwood Society, a group of nearly 700 individuals dedicated to better living through boxwood. His customers, he said, pay him as they would a regular landscaper to spray and fertilize their boxwood plants during the summer and prune the plants in the autumn.
Those clippings, he said, have become so valuable that he pays his customers 12 cents a pound for what he takes from pruning the plants.
Boyd sells the clippings to wholesale florists in Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina, who in turn supply retail florists across the nation. Wholesale florists pay as much as $1.25 a pound for the clippings and retail florists generally pay $2 a pound..
"I got a call from a group in Florida that wanted 100,000 pounds of clippings," he said, adding that he already has orders for this year exceeding 10,000 pounds.
"I'd hate to base my whole year on boxwood," Dunman Floral Supply Inc. owner Wayne Dunman said. "It's really not that lucrative because it's strictly a seasonal thing."
Additionally, the Vinton-based supplier confirmed that the supply of boxwood is highly competitive.
"In the fall I have people calling me all the time," he said. "My phone rings off the hook with people wanting to sell me boxwood." Dunman estimated that the average retail florist uses between 25 and 100 pounds of boxwood clippings during the season leading up to Christmas, for boxwood wreaths retailing for between $25 and $50 each.
John Grant, Charlottesville-area manager for Bartlett Tree Experts, a nationwide landscaping firm, agreed that although there is money to be made in boxwood, it's not an easy business to enter.
"It's a big commodity, it really is. The industry is tight though, probably less than $1 million a year," in Virginia, Grant said. "There aren't many firms doing it, they're very competitive and the profit margin isn't very high."
In fact, the industry is so competitive that many boxwood specialists tend to extoll the virtues of their services to potential customers at the expense of others who also work with the plants. At least once, the competition spilled over into civil court. On April 2, 1992, one boxwood supplier sued another, charging theft of customers.
The suit, filed in Orange County Circuit Court, was against Porter Briggs by Helen Marie Taylor, who alleged that Briggs used "trade secrets and information confidential to Taylor's business regarding supply sources, methods of harvesting, preparing and storing boxwood clippings and knowledge of Taylor's pricing schedule," to establish his own business, the Virginia Boxwood Co. Both dealers then lived in Orange County.
The court dismissed Taylor's suit on July 5, 1994.
"That suit was groundless to begin with," said Virginia Boxwood Co. President Alan Philip, adding that Briggs is no longer with the company. "It cost me $10,000 that this company never made to defend against it."
But, Grant said the suit perfectly illustrates the cutthroat side of the boxwood industry, adding that in his dealings with the Virginia Boxwood Co. the firm has never been anything less than honorable.
Although Bartlett maintains a few boxwood sites in Virginia, Grant said, the company does not market the clippings. He usually recommends the Virginia Boxwood Co. to owners of the plants who want to sell clippings.
"It's just too much of a hassle for us," he said. "It's not really our line of business."
But others moving to cash in on the Christmas market don't mind the hassle and hard work, offering to pay boxwood owners for the privilege of pruning their plants from early October through mid-December.
The demand for the sprigs of the evergreen for Christmas wreaths and other decorations means Boyd has a business capable of grossing upward of $500,000 dollars annually.
Boyd said he checks with his customers yearly although the plants, which grow only 2 or 3 inches a year, may not need annual pruning.
The boxwood, he said, suffers damage if too much is taken too quickly. Like many in the boxwood business, Boyd claimed some of his customers came to him after their plants were damaged by excessive pruning by companies that thought only of making money instead of the health of the plants.
"There are a lot of companies who do this sort of thing, and some are less reputable than others," he said. "They show up when they want and take what they want. I'd rather keep everything open and aboveboard," meaning that he would rather pay owners for the clippings he takes.
Virginia Boxwood Co. offers to care for plants, which require careful pruning to flourish, without charging owners in exchange for taking the clippings free of charge.
"We're taking a little bit of a different tack in the business," Philip said. His company recently advertised in several Virginia newspapers, including The Roanoke Times, soliciting boxwood owners. The ads stated "the company cares for boxwood at no charge to the owner or institution. We make our living by thinning boxwood every two to four years and selling the clippings to the florist industry."
The ad listed several Virginia colleges and universities as customers, including Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia and Mary Baldwin College. The ad invites boxwood owners to call and discuss their plants.
"We just got a plum of a contract," Virginia Boxwood Co. Manager Naz Amatucci said. "We now provide services to [Richmond's Orland E. White] State Arboretum. We went in and gave them a whole maintenance program."
The company, Amatucci said, is trying to gain a foothold in the Roanoke market, where many homes are landscaped with well-developed boxwood shrubbery.
However, some homeowners are unwilling to entrust the care of the traditionally Southern plants to someone from Pennsylvania, he said.
"Roanoke's a hard market to crack," Amatucci said. "When you're someone that doesn't have a Southern accent, you have to work hard to establish trust."
Grant concurred, saying, "In that business, it's not what you know, it's who you know."
Boxwood, Philip said, is a labor-intensive plant that must be pruned with great care or the plant may suffer long-term damage.
"A lot of cutters don't care about the plant," Philip said. "If we can go into a college or estate and take care of that plant, we can come back on whatever timetable we're on and cut again."
Grant, whose company lost a lucrative contract to maintain the boxwood at Staunton's Mary Baldwin College to Philip's firm, claims the Virginia Boxwood Co. harvests "hundreds of thousands of pounds" of boxwood clippings per year, although Philip would not confirm that estimate.
Philip said his Virginia Boxwood Co. is successful because all the boxwood it harvests is sold to a single buyer who distributes the greenery worldwide.
"I am also the Eastern regional manager for the Continental Floral Green Co., the largest floral greenery company in the world," Philip said. "I sell to them. We don't sell to anyone else. This venture is a company that I started to function as a completely independent supply arm for Continental Floral Green. It would be kind of a conflict of interest if I sold to anyone else, wouldn't it?" Continental, based in San Antonio, Texas, supplies materials to florists across the country.
Philip was reluctant to divulge supply and cost information about his business, as was Boyd, citing a fear of competition that he said has grown exponentially over the last couple of years.
Boyd agreed, adding that the industry has seen more people enter and it has become highly charged as a result.
"Most people who have done this just did it to earn a little Christmas money," Boyd said. "Now it's become quite a bit different."
by CNB