Chesco nursery is among many that are withering
After 25 years, Dilworth Nursery has closed. Nationwide, so have up to 30% in the last five years, an expert said.
The landscape of the nursery business began changing - and most definitely not for the better - about five years ago, but Jackie and Rick Dilworth didn't expect theirs to end like this.
On Saturday, they circulated among thousands of their possessions - patio furniture, wood cabinets, kitchen items, the inventory of plants - while the practiced voice of an auctioneer spoke faster than the speed of the typical human's comprehension.
As the result of a conspiracy of circumstances - most notably the struggling economy - after 25 years, the 13-acre Dilworth Nursery in East Nottingham Township, deep in Chester County near downtown Oxford, is closed for good.
The property is for sale, and the Dilworths aren't sure where they'll wind up.
"We never anticipated we'd go out this way," Jackie Dilworth, 51, said. But they also knew, she said, that given the state of the industry, they could not continue to operate their wholesale-retail nursery, which specialized in unusual plantings for public gardens, arboretums, and landscape contractors.
"The business is not going to come back in our lifetime," she said.
It certainly won't happen soon, said Charlie Hall, a horticulture professor at Texas A&M University and an expert on industry trends.
Although hard data aren't yet available, Hall estimated up to 30 percent of nurseries nationwide had closed in the last five years.
In the 1970s, he said, the nursery business was growing at a 14 percent annual rate, but that had slipped precipitously by the end of the 1990s.
He said that today's twentysomethings could help revive the nursery trade eventually, but that it could take 15 years.
"It's been a tough stretch for the nursery businesses and landscaping in general," said Emelie Swackhamer, horticulturist at the Penn State agricultural extension in Lehigh County. For example, Waterloo Gardens retail shop recently shuttered its landmark Main Line store in Devon.
"People were using the equity they paid into their homes to pay for landscaping," said Gregg E. Robertson, president of the Pennsylvania Nursery and Landscape Association. "That equity isn't available anymore.
"The nurseries have been particularly hard-hit."
Still, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties have about 1,000 remaining nurseries, he said, adding, "Horticulturally, it's one of the richest areas of the country."
Along with a housing slump that has weakened demand for nursery stock, the industry's troubles are deeply rooted in demographics, the experts said.
More baby boomers are moving into condos and letting the condo associations do the work. And many of the boomers staying in their homes are losing their appetite for the larger plantings nurseries sell.
In some ways, Swackhamer said, this literally has become a harder business: People are putting more money into "hardscape" - patios, decks, even outdoor additions.
"I think people want that comfort," she said.
The Dilworths evidently were in the vortex of the industry storm. "That's the type of nursery that's been going out of business because of the recession," said Susan Barton, a University of Delaware horticulturist.
The Dilworths also confronted a problem common among family-run nurseries: a lack of successors. "There's always issues with transferring the business," Swackhamer said.
Three years ago, the Dilworths encountered a not-so-common financial issue. Their two daughters got married, and the weddings ripped a huge hole in the Dilworths' budget. Eschewing a modern trend, they had picked up the entire tabs.
"We did it the old-fashioned way," Jackie Dilworth said.
Neither their daughters nor sons-in-laws wanted to continue the business.
Thus, on Friday and Saturday, the possessions accumulated over a generation - from spreaders to Adirondack chairs to Barbie dolls - were offered by Petersheim & Longenecker Auction & Appraisal Co. A pair of snowshoes went for $40; a metal patio set, $115.
About 100 people showed up to pick over plantings that included dwarf pine, blue plume cypress, and forest pansy redbud.
One of those attending, John Wallace, said that although he was sorry to see the nursery go, he would be sorrier to lose his neighbors.
"They're very good people," he said, "hardworking people. We'll miss them."