Shady Oaks Nursery

September 1, 2001 Roger Matz

Photo by Jeff Silker

Shade permits ferns and moss to flourish, but squelches the colorful blooms many gardeners covet as backyard-brighteners.

In all its dappled degrees, shade confounded Clayton Oslund for years. A canopy formed by mature oaks around his Waseca home prevented sunlight and moisture from nourishing much of anything beneath them, forcing him to search for species that could survive or thrive in this semidarkness.

Eventually, he recognized the shade problem as a business opportunity and in 1982 founded a mail-order nursery specializing in plants suited for shady environments. That company, Shady Oaks Nursery, now mails 240,000 catalogues across the nation. It’s so well known for hostas, a lush shade-lover, that the Waseca City Council anointed Waseca as the “Hosta Capital of the Nation.” (Shady Oaks holds patents on three unique varieties of hostas. See related story this issue.)

Shady Oaks has expanded beyond its mail-order catalogue, moving into the wholesale trade and opening a retail outlet in Waseca. The company employs 30 people year around, peaking at 60 during the busy months of April, May and June. It grows thousands of plants in test tubes, including many new, rare species, using a fairly young technology known as “tissue culture.” It owns scattered parcels of land, adding up to 50 acres, mostly within Waseca’s city limits, but uses only 14 acres. The rest is reserved for future expansion.

Oslund retired in 1996, but still “tinkers in his backyard.” His son, Gordy, who walked away from a 13-year banking career to join Shady Oaks in 1993, now runs the company. “Dad was getting overwhelmed with the way the business had grown and asked me to come help him,” Gordy said. He didn’t hesitate, although it meant “leaving a very stable environment and taking a risk. But it was an exciting risk for me. I’d never really taken a risk like that before.” It’s a move that’s paid dividends in job satisfaction. Nine years after joining the nursery, he still enjoys “the growth of our business and making it run more efficiently.”

The Oslunds quickly formed a father-son team in 1993, balancing their talents. “His training was in horticulture, my training was on the business side,” said Gordy. A Minnesota State University graduate, he night-schooled his way to a master’s degree in business administration from the University of St. Thomas during his last years at the bank. He began his new career at Shady Oaks by handling the accounting and helping manage the shipping department.

The elder Oslund possesses an expertise beyond most gardeners. A University of Minnesota professor, he taught plant biology when the university operated a campus in Waseca. “His yard was so shady he couldn’t even grow grass in it. He struggled with what he could find in area nurseries and catalogues,” Gordy said. “He started collecting plants for his own backyard, but it was difficult to find a good, reliable source of shade-loving plants.”

Once he coaxed plants to thrive beneath his trees, he started “selling out of his own backyard.” He put a small ad in Flower and Garden, inviting people to send for his catalogue. “The first year he sent out 500 catalogues and got 50 orders back. The orders led him to believe that ‘there’s other people who have the same problem’ (yards dominated by shade) and he decided to capitalize on that need,” Gordy said. “His backyard was all oak trees, hence the name Shady Oaks.”

By 1984, the business had outgrown the founder’s backyard and garage. He purchased five acres north of town and put up a greenhouse. That land is “still plumb full of hostas,” rows of young plants growing in both shaded and sunlit areas, Gordy said.

In 1989, the elder Oslund made a second major expansion, buying a former implement building in Waseca, processing and shipping orders there instead of in his garage. “It also gave us an office area so we could have a couple of people there for customer service over the phone. It was strictly mail order then,” Gordy said. At the time, his father had just four employees helping with office work, planting, growing and shipping. He continued to teach at the U, working part-time at the nursery, until the Waseca campus closed in 1992. Then he took early retirement and devoted himself to Shady Oaks full time.

“We didn’t open our doors for walk-in sales until 1993. We did it because of demand,” Gordy said. “Our catalogue had become very popular. People in the Twin Cities and Rochester were close enough to come here and see what we were all about.”

In 1991, Oslund acquired Grandpa’s Garden, an out-of-business restaurant sitting on two acres next to the implement building. Three greenhouses sprouted on that property, along with some shade structures to cover potted plants.

A year later, Shady Oaks launched its wholesale division. “This was a major shift. We wouldn’t have foreseen this in the early days,” Gordy said. The wholesale division now accounts for 60 percent of Shady Oaks’ volume, followed by 29 percent from the mail-order catalogues and 11 percent from the retail store located on the old restaurant property.

Shady Oaks furnishes young plants to wholesalers who grow them for a year or two before marketing them to garden centers across the nation. The plants are started under artificial light in a gelatin-like media in test tubes. Although the recipe is confidential, Gordy says it’s a mixture of water, sugar and fertilizer, “everything a plant would need to grow. It’s like what people use in biology classes to grow molds or cultures.”

The process is known as “tissue culture” because plants aren’t started from seeds. “They are started from the growing point of the plant, known as the ‘meristem.’ That’s what goes in the test tube, not a seed,” Gordy said. “In your garden, you can divide your plants to make more plants, but it’s slow. By using tissue culture, you can get thousands of plants over a year or two.” Gordy says his father “didn’t originate the process, but he taught it at the college here. And he put it to work. The nursery business was right up his alley.”

The tiny plants are “potted” in one and a half-inch “plugs,” eight dozen plants to a tray. Some wholesalers grow them to fit four-inch pots and market them in a year. Others nurture them for two years, getting them to gallon sizes or even larger. But most of the plants Shady Oaks ships to its retail catalogue buyers go in three- or four-inch pots.

Perhaps appropriately, the building where plants are “manufactured” via tissue culture is located in Waseca’s industrial park. Shady Oaks bought that 5,000-square foot building in 1994 and three years later put up four large greenhouses nearby covering a total of 38,000 square feet. After plants are propagated in the building, they are transferred to the greenhouses.

At first, Shady Oaks grew only hostas for the wholesale trade “but in the last two years, we’ve made significant changes and added many new perennials,” Gordy said. “Our focus now is a little more than shade plants. Our focus is on new varieties.”

Plant breeders develop many of these new varieties, then turn to Shady Oaks to propagate them in quantities. “Breeders are usually independents who absolutely love horticulture. For some, it’s their hobby. It’s their life’s dream to come up with a new variety of plant or flower,” Gordy said.

Shady Oaks welcomes the attention of such breeders. “This gives us an edge with new and unusual plant material. There are not many people in the nation propagating these plants,” Gordy said. Many are patented and have more colorful leaves or flowers and better endurance than established varieties. When Shady Oaks grows plants for breeders, “the breeders take some themselves and we make an agreement to keep some (for resale) and pay them a royalty,” Gordy said.

“We’re going to focus on the wholesale side of the business and continue to work on new varieties, coming up with some of our own and networking with breeders. The idea is to expand our product line. Wholesale is where we have invested the most, but we’re not going to drop what we’re doing in mail order,” he said.

“The nursery business can be cutthroat, especially in bedding plants, the annuals. Garden centers are starting to carry perennials but they don’t have the wide cross-section that we do,” Gordy said. “We have competition from other mail order catalogues and we have competition on the wholesale side, from people coming into tissue culture. But it’s at a young stage, not mature. That’s why we’re focusing on wholesale, because it’s difficult to get into. It takes a tremendous amount of knowledge to put a lab together.”

He frets more about weather than competition. “Hot weather is a concern because it takes more water (a cost factor) and puts stress on the plants. I worry about windstorms taking out our greenhouses. I worry about winter storms. We grow year-around.”

Julie Oslund, Gordy’s wife, is vice-president of Shady Oaks. One of her responsibilities is customer service in the wholesale division. “The customer service aspect is very important. It helps differentiate us from competitors. If we can provide good service and a good quality plant, we can command a higher price,” he said. Rather than wait until a gardener has questions, Shady Oaks builds customer service into its catalogues. “We try to put most of our knowledge into the catalogue…where a plant will grow, soil requirements, how far apart plants should be and shade requirements,” he said. Customers can also access plant photos and detailed information and place orders on the company’s web site. (www.shadyoaks.com)

Quality starts with Shady Oaks’ growers, who nurture plants in beds, pots or test tubes. “Our growers have horticulture training, typically two years of it. They oversee the quality of the plants,” Gordy said. Everything gets a final look before it leaves the nursery. “Our shippers have an eye for quality. They won’t ship anything that’s substandard.”

In addition to founder’s unique background and the company’s specialization in shade plants, Shady Oaks has another asset that sets it apart from competing nurseries. That’s Hans Hansen, a former student of Clayton Oslund. “He’s been our research and development coordinator since dad retired,” Gordy said.

Hansen, 31, is a native of Jeffers. “He went two years in Waseca, then finished (at the U of M) in St. Paul, then worked a year in a tissue culture lab in New Zealand, so he’s had very valuable experience. He eats and breathes horticulture. He’s come up with 10 new hostas in six or seven years (three are patented). He also manages the laboratories, the whole tissue culture process.” He even photographs plants for Shady Oaks’ catalogues, a job once handled by his former professor.

The current retail catalogue reflects Shady Oaks’ reputation for shade-loving plants in general and hostas in particular. Hostas are featured on pages 3 through 31, consuming the first third of the book. Shade perennials take up pages 32 through 86. The reader doesn’t find anything resembling a sun-lover until grasses and grasslike plants start on page 87, followed by ferns and vines. The catalogue ends on page 102 with an encore for hostas. (Right now, the wholesale catalogue offers more sun-lovers. Eventually, some of the rare new species and bright perennials being cultivated for the wholesale trade will begin to appear in the retail catalogue.)

Besides having the sales figures to prove it, Gordy knows Shady Oaks fills a niche and satisfies the yearning of gardeners frustrated by shade. “We get letters from customers who say ‘I wish I’d known about you years ago. This is the solution to my dense, shady yard!’ We have a very positive reaction wherever we go. We’ve become a very common name across the nation with gardeners as a source of plants that grow in shade,” he said.

“Shady perennials won’t give a person the bright colors that annuals do, bright reds and oranges. They give a more soft, muted color. But what can be done is to mix perennials with annuals. Some blossom in early spring, some in late spring, some in summer, so you constantly have a changing garden which, in my mind, is a more interesting garden.”

He says his father’s backyard “has everything, just about everything that’s in the catalogue and more. He’s quite a collector.” That’s not true of his own yard, however. “There’s no explosion of flowers. I love gardening, but it’s difficult to find the time.” He explains it with an adage:

“The cobbler’s kid doesn’t have shoes.”

Waseca Hosta-tality

The hosta is a decorative plant imported from Asia many years ago.

“They’re great as an ornamental, they like shade and they’re low maintenance,” says Gordy Oslund, president of Shady Oaks Nursery in Waseca. Hostas come in various sizes and different leaf patterns, rich in greens, blues and yellows. They grow where it’s wet or dry, even where there’s salt spray.

Shady Oaks has been known for hostas since it mailed its first catalogue in 1982. “It’s our primary plant, then and now,” he said. The nursery sponsored Hosta Fairs every Saturday in June this year, inviting gardeners to browse their collection of hostas and stroll through their display gardens.

In 1999, the Waseca City Council declared Waseca the “Hosta Capital of the Nation.” No signs have been erected on the outskirts of town yet, but Oslund said “they’re still discussing what they want to do with that. We’re thinking of planting hostas in various city parks.”

Oslund said city officials apparently made the designation “after they saw the traffic we’re attracting to Waseca, the visitors and all the hostas we propagate.”

Shady Oaks currently has patents on three hostas, which Oslund describes as follows:

Hosta Touch of Class: This has a really heavy leaf. It feels thick. It has an outstanding chartreuse color, blue and chartreuse, very striking. It hasn’t been released for sale yet. We’re trying to build up the stock. We’re not sure when it will be available for sale.

Hosta Titanic: This is a very large plant, four to five feet across once it matures. It has a solid green center with a real wide gold band around it.

Hosta Old Glory: This is a medium-size plant with a lighter shade of green in the center with a dark green edge. It also has some very prominent veins in the leaves.

Hans Hansen, research and development coordinator at Shady Oaks, patented the three hostas.