Sandy's Plants States Served: VA, MD, NC, DC Address:  8011 E. Bell Creek Rd. Mechanicsville, VA 23111 Phone:  Ph 804 746 7092 Website:  www.sandysplants.com

Company Profile:
Sandy’s Plants, Inc. is a family-owned perennial wholesale and retail nursery that has been in operation since 1979 in Mechanicsville, VA.

The story of Sandy’s Plants, Inc. is one that exemplifies the nursery industry’s belief that hard work and determination yield great rewards. The company began out of desperation and has evolved into a perennial nursery that serves garden centers and landscapers in four states and boasts one of the largest selections of perennials on the East Coast.

In 1979, Sandy McDougle was perfectly content as a Special Education teacher for the Hanover County School system. She and her husband, Wayne, had just moved into their new home and were looking forward to getting settled.
Sandy’s love of gardening had led her to spend an extensive amount of time and money establishing her gardens at their previous house, so you can imagine her disgust and disbelief when she drove by that house and saw all of her wonderful perennials lying in a discarded pile on the driveway waiting to be replaced by meatball shaped shrubs.

When Sandy’s mother moved a year later, she was determined that her mother’s perennials would not meet the same horrible fate that her treasured plants had experienced. So she dug up her mother’s creeping phlox and lined it out in the front yard of her newly built home until she could have time to establish her borders. The next spring, Gary Hutt from the former Pocono Garden Center twenty miles away, happened to wander up her driveway looking for a nearby pick-your-own strawberry operation and spotted the phlox in bloom. He offered Sandy $0.50 for every creeping phlox that she could dig and put in a cardboard berry basket. Sandy jumped at the opportunity for “free money” as she saw it. Her two children, Ryan, 8 and Mitzi, 6, were enlisted to help dig the Phlox by truck headlights in the morning before school, and to help with the deliveries after school.

It wasn’t too long before Sandy’s husband, Wayne, realized that digging these plants out of the rows year after year would eventually create a pool in the front yard due to soil loss thus they started experimenting with growing perennials in plastic containers using a pine bark mix as a soil substitute. Two-quart plastic nursery pots were new to the market and Virginia Tech was just starting to experiment with soilless mixtures. There was no guarantee that the novel idea was going to work but fortunately it was a successful experiment.

The business continued to grow slowly with four production beds and the occasional help of after school kids. It wasn’t until eight years later that Sandy decided to give up her teaching job and take on Sandy’s Plants as a career.

Today, the nursery is still a family operation. Sandy’s daughter, Mitzi (remember she started at age 6) is the company’s CEO and her son-in-law, J.R. is the CFO. Together, along with Sandy, they have turned what began as a hobby into a highly successful and respected company that grows over 2000 types of perennials on 30 acres.

One of Sandy’s primary responsibilities these days is to search out the latest and best perennials. She travels to Europe and scours catalogs to find the exciting new items. One thing the nursery prides itself on is selecting only the strongest growing, adaptable perennials to grow. Each year, plants are evaluated to determine their distinct characteristics so that the customer knows that they are being offered the best of the best. She also goes on frequent sales visits to show garden center buyers interesting plants that are available. (She has been very excited about being able to offer her customers the STEPABLES® line of plants this year and has been having a great time promoting the STEPABLES® contest.)

The company’s focus is specializing in rare and unusual perennials as well as carrying the perennial “bread and butter” items. Most plants are grown in either 3 qt. or 4 qt. containers outside so that the plants are acclimated to the Mid-Atlantic’s climate and ready for planting any time.

Sandy’s husband, Wayne, and his creative partner, Jack, have been instrumental in streamlining the production end of the nursery. One of their innovations was turning a silage feeder into a portable “mixer wagon” pot-filling machine. The nursery has found that it is more economical to fill 5000 pots in an hour with three men than it is to fill them on a production line. One other useful creative gem designed at the nursery is the “water wagon”. This machine consists of a 1000-gallon tank mounted on a trailer that is transported by a tractor. It allows plants to be “watered-in” after planting and also to spot water heavy drinkers without turning on the entire irrigation supply.

The nursery currently has fourteen full time employees on the grounds as well as three truck drivers who make deliveries whenever needed and a couple of part-time workers who help keep the equipment running. The number of employees expands to about thirty-five people when the nursery is going “full-tilt” in the springtime. This includes extra planting crews, truck drivers and extra ‘pullers’ who fill the orders for delivery.

We have four greenhouses, the newest of which is dedicated to STEPABLES® production. We propagate much of our own material using seeds, cuttings and divisions as well as bringing in unrooted cuttings and plugs. This keeps our greenhouses busy in production throughout the year. The addition of a mist system and more automatic irrigation equipment has helped to increase our productivity.

The nursery is open year round and offers an excellent availability, especially to landscapers during the winter months. A unique aspect of the 30-acre nursery is that it is open to retail and wholesale customers who drive golf carts around the nursery to pick out their plants. Each variety of plant is labeled with a sign that includes a picture and cultural information. Also included on this sign is our retail price, which is always higher than local garden centers so that we are in no way competing with our primary customers. This system also allows designers and installers to bring or send their customers to the nursery without worrying about wholesale pricing disclosures.

The nursery is open 6 days a week from mid-March through mid-October and Monday through Friday the rest of the year. We are located 8 miles northeast of Richmond in Mechanicsville. Please come visit our nursery or website at www.sandysplants.com. And be sure to look for the SPI tags and “Grown by Sandy’s Plants” stickers when you shop any of the hundreds of garden centers and nurseries we sell to in Virginia and surrounding areas.

Community Activities

Sandy frequently speaks to local groups, such as garden clubs and nursery associations about perennial plants. She also invites the public to tour her personal gardens when they visit. One of the most popular events is the nursery’s annual Maymont Day. In early May we sponsor a special day for the public to visit the nursery and buy perennials. We donate 50% of the sales on this day to the Maymont Foundation, which is responsible for maintaining the wonderful Maymont gardens as well as its historic mansion and outbuildings, farm-zoo, and learning center. Maymont is one of the Richmond area’s premier attractions and the public are eager to help support it by attending this event.

Sandy has also served on the board of the Richmond Children’s Museum, donating both time and plants to help enrich the experience of children who visit. She frequently donates plants to other community groups, as well.

Personal Notes:

Sandy McDougle, the owner, is a true gardener at heart and she loves working on her display gardens, both in the public areas of the nursery and around her home, which is on the nursery grounds. She is always on the lookout for new and unusual plants and loves to share what she has learned about them. She also loves to propagate plants. Any plant that dares to overfill its pot is fair game to be converted to babies.

Sandy also enjoys reading and spending time with her grandchildren. More than once we’ve seen the children accompanying Sandy on her rounds about the nursery in her golf cart. Sandy is a member of the Central Virginia Nursery and Landscape Association, the Perennial Plant Association, the American Horticultural Society and her local garden club.

Mitzi Marker, our CEO, enjoys her personal gardens, particularly the food garden that supplies her with fresh produce for the cooking she enjoys. Her kitchen goodies are always a huge hit at the Open House and Designer Day events at the nursery and a welcome thank you to the employees when they’ve been working extra hard. When she is not working at the nursery or spending time with her children, Mitzi likes to read or spend a little time at her sewing machine being creative.

Elise Zylstra, our sales manager is an avid gardener and spends much of her free time in her perennial gardens along with her youngest son, who shares her gardening enthusiasm. She also enjoys photography, backyard birdwatching, and reading, particularly mysteries and plant books.

Carter Cumber, who runs the greenhouses, is also a big reader. We often see her with a book at break or lunchtime. She and her husband love to go camping, hiking and fishing, and just enjoying the outdoors.

Many of the other workers here enjoy gardening, often spending the last few hours of daylight in spring and summer working in their home gardens after spending a long hard day at work in the nursery. Sharing garden successes and failures, as well as plants, helps to keep the workers feeling more like family than just co-workers.

STEPABLES Contest:

We are very excited to be a part of the STEPABLES® contest. We think it is a wonderful way to promote the STEPABLES® line and to contribute to the communities where our customers are located. There are so many worthy charities and many of us wish we could do more to support them, so the idea that the contest winner gets to have $5000 dollars donated to their charity in their name is great. We know that the individual customers who win will be thrilled not only at winning, but also that they can contribute to a group that they feel deserves their support. We hope the contest will attract some youngsters and help them enjoy the satisfaction of gardening and contributing to their community as well.

Testimonials:

This is our first year growing STEPABLES® and we’ve already had a great response from our retail centers. This is a line their customers have heard of and it has proven very popular where STEPABLES® have been available in the past. We’re sure these will be a winner for our customers.