Profile: North Branch Nursery
As North Branch Nursery enters into it's 25th year of business, it has plenty to be proud of. The nursery, born out of Lynette and Tom Oberhouse's love for growing plants and creating new life, sold just three Christmas trees in its first year. Slowly, not sacrificing quality for quantity, North Branch Nursery has taken on a life of its own, expanding into a retail and wholesale garden center, diversifying its plant selection, and providing design, landscaping, installation, and after-plant care services. Now, North Branch has over 60 employees, including two Oberhouse children, Nick and Aubrey.
North Branch's Pemberville location is “good for wholesale, okay for landscaping, and a detriment for retail”, says Oberhouse. Despite this, the pair chooses to keep the location because they want to sell their plants where they grow them. “Since everything is grown here in northwest Ohio, all the plants have acclimated to the local climate and do really well in this soil”. Trees and shrubs are their specialty, but they also sell 750 different types of perennials, containers, furniture and various other garden goods.
Word of mouth is their best advertising technique, and Oberhouse knows that it is fair and honest treatment that will keep both her employees and customers at North Branch.
Oberhouse is proud that North Branch maintains a democratic workplace where employees contribute greatly to the direction of the business. Though she was once a political science student, she demands that politics do not interfere in the workplace, rewarding employees by merit and integrity only.
Education is extremely important to the Oberhouses. Plant knowledge changes with each generation, and Oberhouse knows that the length of the generation gap has narrowed. The North Branch staff stays ahead of their clientele by attending many classes, lectures, and seminars. North Branch offers classes to their retail and landscape customers about maintenance to make their investments more worth their while. The Oberhouses also teach and participate in speaking engagements to the public and to people involved in the industry.
Oberhouse acknowledges the changes that technology has made to her business. She mentions the increased use of computers and the Internet for communication, and the improvement in irrigation technology. Pot-n-Pot, a new planting aide where the plant is grown inside a pot within a pot in the ground, has been very helpful to them because it allows them to dig the plant whenever they need to as opposed to just digging it while it is dormant. Oberhouse expects the rate of technological change to increase only exponentially in the coming years.
As part of Maumee Valley Growers, Oberhouse has found it helpful to network and work with other growers. It has been a great resource for North Branch, and she is proud of her membership to the group.
Visit North Branch Nursery in Pemberville, or on the web at www.northbranchnursery.com
•••••••••
Contact the Maumee Valley Growers for more information (fill in the message and send it)
