So You Want to Start a Nursery Kindle Edition

Having once owned a nursery, a friend asked me about setting up her land to start an operation. I tried to tell her it wasn’t as easy as it appeared. This book gives all the downsides and things that could go wrong. Things a neophyte nursery owner doesn’t usually find out until they’ve committed time and money. I highly recommend this to anyone thinking about getting into the nursery business.

Chock full of information and should be required reading for anyone considering the nursery business. Although thorough enough for serious or large scale nurseries, the wisdoms so generously shared in this book are useful, and sometimes applicable to even the smallest backyard nursery. If you are even contemplating starting a nursery, of any size, the best business decision you'll make will be reading this book cover to cover with high lighter in hand. I learned so much from this book, I firmly believe it will pay for itself over and over: by helping me prevent common & potential oversights and mistakes, with time, money and heart ache saving advice, and tips to improve, promote and prosper my business.

Why only 4 stars: I purchased this book with the idea of STARTING a nursery. The classical would-be businessman who wants to start a business from scratch, being not wealthy enough to start a fully-fledged nursery with all the equipment installed and operating in a short while. My expectation was how to start a small business using the space in my yard, and learn to proceed from that point onward, step-by-step. To my surprise, the author has proceeded too quickly to the automation process, the climate control, the mansion-sized greenhouses and all the costly equipment of a factory employing dozens of employees. This has made me lose track too quickly and I didn't follow it up.Why 4 stars: After all, the book describes the challenges of running a nursery in a clear and realistic manner. The wealthier-than-myself reader who has enough land to set-up one, will find this book quite useful. I use organic approaches which largely eliminate most of the pests and diseases, but if you're the more conventional grower, the book may still help you to understand the challenges involved.

This book is indispensable for anyone interested in the topic. It is loaded with information that I for one am extremely grateful the author decided to share with the world. I learned in the time it took to finish this book what would have taken me years of trial and error (likely to be mostly error) on my own. Highly recommended!

Tony Avent owns Plant Delights Nursery, known for its sometimes offensive but always memorable plant catalogs, and the wild selection of unusual plants. Tony's brash, honest, and a straight shooter. If you want to be coddled and told how easy it all will be, look elsewhere as that's not Tony's style.But I laughed out loud nearly every page from his bitingly sarcastic wit and found myself nodding my head as we walked me through the many pitfalls in operating your own nursery, and his reasoning in choosing certain ways to operate over others. The general feeling I get from reading is that if you can make it through this book with your desire to own a nursery intact, then you might just have what it takes to actually operate one.Even if you're just curious about what it's like to own a nursery, like I was, it's an engaging read.

Although this book does contain a bit of information about cultivation of plant life, such as a basic run down of soil , nutrients, and pest/pesticides , it is more focused on the business aspect of running the nursery. Expect to hear about choosing land (buying vs. renting), water sources, laws regarding your land, organizations and licenses to be aware of, forming the company, making a catolouge , employess, insurance, financial figures and such. A decent read with some good points to consider. If you are going into commercial growing and selling it wouldn't hurt to give it a read.

So You Want to Start a Nursery is a must read for any one who has that little idea niggling at the back of their brain that a nursery might be the thing to bring a little extra cash. Don't think for a minute that you can just stick any old fruit trees into the ground and soon you will have mega money flowing in. WRONG!This book is an eye opener in that you have to find the right area on your property, find out what nutrients your soil needs, research the type of trees are suitable for your area, what kind of fertilizers to use (whether you want to organic or not), what kind of pest control you want to use and when and how often to spray, and one of the most important items is learning how to prune your particular kind of tree. Apple, peach, pear and plum are all different.Also, and not a must, is available water for irrigation. While the trees are small and you don't have too many, buckets with holes drilled in the bottom can be used but you will need to figure out something else if you decide to have very many trees and nice big healthy fruit.This little book goes through all phases and is an eye opener for the budding (no pun intended) fruit tree farmer. It has good sound advice and is a nice addition to your gardening library.

When i first got into cloning plants years ago, this was one of the first books that I purchased and read. I think it gives more real life experience, and what to actually do, rather than what it seems like, and what you are hoping. I feel like I learned a lot from reading this book, and it put me on the path of learning other things I did not intend on when starting the reading.Is it necessary for starting a nursery business off? Probably not. But I did enjoy it, and learn from it. What else are books for?

I've found this book very readable and extremely useful for understanding the main things I'll need to do when I start my nursery. Tony Avent starts with two pages designed to put you off such a venture, and having survived that baptism of fire I felt all the more energised to read the rest of the book.The chapters cover things like formation of the business, choosing your site, different types of nursery (wholesale, liner, retail, mail order), equipment needed for commercial scale growing of plants, a bit about pesticides, your plant catalogues, business planning and insurance.This is a US book. Some chapters are about legal matters that would be different in the UK, but even those give one an idea of the questions to ask in the UK.While I LOVED most of the book, there were two chapters I disagreed with - those on marketing and customer service. The one supposed to about marketing is actually about PR and advertising. It has some good ideas but nothing is mentioned about profiling your likely client base, designing marketing campaigns etc.The chapter on customer service confirms a personal feeling I have that many businesses like to talk about providing excellent customer service, but actually they consider customers to be something of an inconvenience.Be warned that this guy thinks big! He seems to assume that you will have quite a few staff from the beginning - I found myself trying to work out how to prioritise all the new ideas the book gave me, as I plan to start my nursery on my own with minimal capital. But even having to do that has been a good experience for me.All in all, a very good read, and I hope it will help you as much as it has me.REVIEW UPDATE, 2012:OK, I now know that there was FAR, FAR more involved in starting a nursery than I thought when I wrote this review. I still think the book is a good starting point, but that really is all it can be. Some of the areas missing are production planning, merchandising (including help with deciding what plants to grow, what size of pots to grow each in (the market expects certain kinds of plants in certain pot sizes, and won't buy them if you get that wrong!). Plus how to deal with unsold stock (do you pot it up? divide it? sell it off cheap? throw it away?). Still, buy this book as your starting point, and get Chris Snook's 'Garden Centre Manager' too, plus a John Stanley book on merchandising and display. Good luck!

This book is well written and constructed - for the US market but I was disappointed with it as I did not find the information relevant enough ie local legislation etc for starting up a small-scale plant nursery in the UK. I would have liked the country of origin stated in brackets after the publisher's name eg (USA).

Great book, informal, knowledgeable and practical

This book looked good and just what I needed until it arrived and I opened the pages. Written well but it is all about America and has virtually no relevance to Britain - very disappointing - Colourful front cover and good price - delivery very fast too

Good read if this is what your into.