THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 12, 1996 TAG: 9605130183
SECTION: HOME PAGE: G1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARY FLACHSENHAAR, SPECIAL TO HOME & GARDEN
LENGTH: Long : 187 lines
A CHRYSANTHEMUM GROWS in Chesapeake. It grows straight, full and strong. It is the undisputed Cadillac among mums, in the opinion of growers around the globe. It is known, in those circles, as the Norm White mum.
Mums grown by Norm White, farmer, businessman, lifelong Deep Creek resident, are dependable and spectacular. They decorate the sets of some national morning TV shows. They are discussed with envy by growers in Holland. They travel as far away as Maine, Florida and Chicago, where they are sold in supermarkets.
No way you can confuse a garden-variety mum with a Norm White mum, say those in the business of buying and selling flowering plants.
One longtime admirer is Dick Cook, the president of Norfolk Wholesale Floral Corp. Cook has bought flowers from White since 1956, when the nursery on Old Mill Road opened for business as a single small greenhouse.
``Norm's mums are full and vibrant, never scraggly,'' said Cook. ``They look like they were raised in a healthy family. They look like they've been loved.''
Today, mums are just one of the 60 varieties of flowering plants raised with love by Norman Talmage White in 15 acres of immaculate greenhouses he helped design and construct.
For most of its 40 years, White's Nursery & Greenhouses has been best known for its mum, the benchmark in the industry, although poinsettias, lilies, gloxinias, roses and much more bloom beneath the high greenhouse ceilings. Most of the plants grow from small cuttings White buys from propagators such as Yoder Bros., which is based in Ohio.
And most of what White grows is sold wholesale to supermarkets and garden centers. Only 10 percent of the business is retail.
Forty years ago, the retail business was all the plants that could fit on a wooden bench at the end of the driveway. Today, the 10-year-old retail operation, White's Old Mill Garden Center, is a bustling 5,000-square-foot store and 15,000-square-foot greenhouse. The center sells trees, plants, shrubs, soil, fertilizers, tools, decorative and gift items - everything a home gardener's wish list could name.
When Norm and his wife, Hetty, started their business 40 years ago, they had one other employee. Today they employ 160 people year round, 200 in peak seasons, such as bedding-plant season, which is just now winding down. Hetty is the chief financial officer; Norm's in charge of everything else.
A lot has changed in the business. But there is much that has stayed the same.
``When we started out, I worked a 16- or 17-hour day, seven days a week,'' said White, 63. ``I still do.''
When they started out, White added, his motto was ``detail, detail, detail.'' It still is.
When they started out, his aim was the highest quality possible for every plant he raised. That is still his aim and always will be, said White, no matter how big this bloomin' business grows. Today, the company produces in excess of 5 1/2 million plants annually.
Continuous growth is the goal of a business that began almost by accident. White, a naval architect who worked at the shipyard, had no intention of going into the flower business, even though his father, Willis Sheridan White, had been a cut-flower farmer, on the land where Norm still lives and works, since 1930.
One day in 1955, Norm looked out the window of the Chesapeake apartment he shared with his bride, Hetty, his sweetheart since they were students together at Deep Creek High. He saw a greenhouse, in pieces, in a neighbor's backyard, and ended up buying part of it. After erecting the greenhouse on the family homeplace the next year, Norm and Hetty began to grow and sell snapdragons.
The Whites both kept their shipyard jobs while trying to make a go of the nursery.
``I'd get up at 3 a.m., make several flower deliveries before going to work at the shipyard,'' recalled Norm. ``When I'd get home I'd make more deliveries and do whatever needed doing in the greenhouse. Sometimes I'd work till 10 or 11.''
Norm quit the shipyard in 1973 to devote himself full-time to the nursery.
Today, the original greenhouse still stands, within view of the office where Norm works alongside two computers that track conditions in all the greenhouses. Seedlings are started in the small building, although it remains for sentimental rather than practical reasons, said White. The little-greenhouse-that-could has been upstaged many times over by the 26 more sophisticated structures that were built gradually over decades.
Dana White Jones, Norm and Hetty's 36-year-old daughter, remembers the summer evenings long ago when she and her younger brother, Tal, had to pull black shade cloth over the plants so the blooms would get no more than the prescribed 12 hours of light.
``We couldn't go off with friends until the job was done,'' said Jones, who is the company vice president for marketing and sales.
Today the shade cloth is controlled by computer. So is the temperature, humidity and artificial lighting in the massive greenhouses.
And many jobs are now done by machine, so that scenes that look like they belong in a science-fiction movie pop up at intervals in the acres of tranquil green. One robot sticks name tags in a long line of potted plants, then lifts 24 plants into a tray. Another fills flats with soil, then pokes a hole where each plant is to be placed.
``In order to compete in the marketplace, you have to mechanize,'' said Norm White, who designed some of the machinery he uses. ``But human handiwork is still what makes the difference.'' White insists, for instance, that people, not computers, should decide when it's time to water.
His ability to be a wise and patient farmer and an aggressive businessman at the same time accounts for Norm White's success, say those who work with him.
``Dad's very driven, way out front with his agenda while the rest of us are trying to catch up,'' said Tal White, 33. A TV weathercaster in Richmond during the week, Tal, who has a degree in horticulture, works at the nursery on weekends.
``But often, he is more the farmer,'' continued Tal, recalling the times he's come upon his father working in the garden behind the family's ranch home, which sits alongside the flotilla of greenhouses.
``In this business, you have to stay a farmer,'' said Tom Lavagetto, general manager of the company. ``Every three or four years some big corporation looks at the floral industry and starts licking its chops. They try to come in to the industry, but they fail because you just can't make a plant be ready when you want it to be ready. Mother Nature makes the final decision on these things.''
Norm White knows that, better than anyone. He will sell no plant before, or after, its time, say his peers.
``He is dedicated to the relentless pursuit of perfection,'' said Lavagetto, who has worked with White in the industry since the mid '70s. White was named Floral Marketer of the Year by the industry in 1993. Lavagetto received the award in 1995.
``It takes a special person to do the job the way Norm White does it,'' said Terry Humfeld, director of floral programs at the Floral Marketing Association, a trade group. ``He looks at every single detail in his facility and lets nothing slip.''
In this 40th anniversary year, the company has dedicated itself to ``taking the business to the next level,'' in the words of manager Lavagetto.
``We have become more market driven. We've increased our advertising by more than 50 percent,'' he said. ``And instead of just visiting our major buyers, we're bringing them here to take a look at our product.'' Those buyers include Stop 'n Shop supermarkets in Boston, Safeway in Washington, D.C., and Harris Teeter in Charlotte, N.C.
White added: ``We're trying to listen more to the consumer. We read everything we can find about consumer trends on colors and home decorating.''
What they know for sure is that baby boomers, having attained some financial security as they enter middle age, are now patronizing garden centers. Gardening has become the great American hobby, and the floral industry is enjoying a growth spurt.
``No matter what we put out in the retail center, people can't seem to get enough,'' said White.
In their years in the business, the Whites have learned that they must expand cautiously if they are to maintain a quality product. They say they will add greenhouses, automation and markets as long as each plant that leaves the premises continues to live up to the Norm White name.
Norm and Hetty want all of their customers to be as satisfied as Virginia Doughty of Chesapeake, a regular in their retail center.
``A great many of us gardeners think of White's as an A Number One operation,'' said Doughty. ``I often take out-of-town guests there just because it's so beautiful. I love to listen to them ooh and aah.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
RICHARD L. DUNSTON/The Virginian-Pilot
Norm and Hetty White raise chrysanthemums and about 60 other
varieties of flowering plants. The mums are sometimes used on the
sets of TV shows.
The Whites' daughter, Dana White Jones, tends petunias in one of 27
greenhouses on 15 acres in Deep Creek.
Kuniko Burgess prunes roses in another of the Whites' greenhouses.
Public tours are conducted twice yearly.
Color photo courtesy of White's Nursery & Greenhouse
An aerial view of the greenhouses.
Photo
RICHARD L. DUNSTON/The Virginian-Pilot
Ronda Fuller pots plants at a mechanical potting machine at White's
Nursery in Chesapeake.
Graphic
TO VISIT WHITE'S
White's Old Mill Garden Center, 3133 Old Mill Road, Chesapeake,
is open 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday and Saturday, 9
a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday, and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday. It is closed
Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. Call 487-2300.
Greenhouse tours, open to the public, are conducted twice yearly.
A bedding plant tour is held every March; a poinsettia tour is the
first weekend after Thanksgiving.
by CNB