Hedging Their Bets

A cold call one late February day from Beau Rivage Casino on the Gulf Coast to Natchez Trace Greenhouses in Kosciusko, Miss., completely changed the growing operation’s future. Built and operated by casino mogul Steve Wynn, the Beau Rivage at the time was said to be one of the most elaborate casinos in the area. Its horticulturist was in search of 6,000 pots of blue hyacinth and 6,000 pots of daffodils for the grand opening. Although Natchez Trace was past its bulb crop season, owner Mark Terkanian directed her to growers who had availability. She found what she wanted and so began the relationship between Natchez Trace and Beau Rivage, which today makes up 30 percent of Terkanian’s wholesale business year-round.

“We custom grew a few things for their lobby when they opened and then we started getting one atrium turn a year. Then she gave us another and another and slowly but surely we had almost all of their inside business,” says Terkanian, who runs Natchez Trace Greenhouses and Gardens with his wife and business partner Lori Hitchcock. “Then she asked if I’d be interested in the outside garden business and I said I would. We bid on it and have been getting it ever since. They’ve been an excellent account and real fine people to do business with, and then Hurricane Katrina came by and blew them away.”

Despite the disaster, the casino honored its contract, paying Natchez Trace for its costs for six months worth of crops that the operation already had on its benches. After another five rough months, Natchez Trace restocked the casino’s atrium, provided annuals for the grounds and the MGM property reopened in August 2006.

“We have had purchase orders ever since,” Terkanian says. “The hurricane set us back a bit but it would be difficult to replace an account like that.”

Natchez Trace provides top service, with its trucks delivering plants to the casino by 5 a.m. so the atrium display can be changed before guests wake up. The casino’s outdoor beds are changed four times a year with 25,000 6-inch pots of mostly annuals, and its indoor atrium averages between 2,500 and 3,000 7- or 8-inch potted plants, changed every two weeks, Terkanian says.

“It is a good account and the Beau Rivage being what it is has given us some notoriety in the region,” he says. Natchez Trace has built on that notoriety to gain the Silver Star Casino account, which it services twice annually, providing annuals for the outside beds. 

The Accidental Brand

Terkanian and Hitchcock established Natchez Trace Greenhouses in 1994. Terkanian, formerly vice president of production for Earl J. Small Growers in Fla., met Hitchock there when he hired her. When they decided to open their own business, they looked for an operation off the Gulf Coast, away from the poor water quality and violent storms. The bankrupt greenhouse operation they found in Kosciusko had formally been Love’s Greenhouses, which was in the pot mum business for eight years before the couple bought it in a bank auction on the Kosciusko courthouse steps. The 5-acre facility had been neglected, but the couple resurrected it and added 2 acres of outdoor production, a garden center with a gift shop and a parking lot.

In addition to the annuals and flowering potted plants it produces for its casino clients, Natchez Trace produces 250,000 poinsettia liners for wholesale growers, serving the vicinity between Nashville and Baton Rouge. It also provides flowering potted plants, annuals, perennials and foliage to other retail garden centers in the area, grocery stores, florists and landscapers. The business is tapering off some of its flowering potted crops like Easter lilies in favor of producing more combination planters for spring customers. Hitchcock, who runs the retail side of the operation, offers an in-home container planting service that has been growing each year. She also offers landscape plans at no charge, as long as customers buy plants from Natchez Trace, and lays out plants for landscape partners to install.

About 30 percent of the retail business comes from local landscape and patio shows run through the Mississippi Nursery & Landscape Association. The shows–now in Jackson, Biloxi and Hattiesburg–each draw up to 7,500 paying customers. Despite the operation’s location in rural Kosciusko, with a population of 6,000 and a market area of up to 25,000, the shows add to its notoriety in the area and draw out-of-town traffic from as far as 100 miles away, Terkanian says.

“We created a brand without ever really getting it together,” he laughs. “People know the Natchez Trace Gardens name in the area from the garden and patio shows and the Beau Rivage, and it’s created a demand for our product that I’m not sure we could have created any other way.” 

Committed To Quality

The operation employs 34 people in peak season, including seven section growers, three drivers and its garden center staff. Terkanian credits the operation’s quality products with the right balance of dedicated employees. He says Natchez Trace continually gets inquiries about supplying plant material and he is sure Natchez Trace could command a larger market if it expanded.

“I think a good production person can handle 5 to 7 acres with good section growers under them, and to handle any more than that you really need another person,” he says. “So we would really need to go from 5 to 10 acres to justify the kind of salary needed for a person like that.”

Terkanian is hoping he can find that person in an apprentice–one who is interested in taking over ownership of Natchez Trace Greenhouses and Gardens in the near future.

“They could have experience, they could be a graduate–I’m looking for the right work ethic and a fairly long-term commitment to learn for four or five years and then begin to take ownership,” he says. “I’m nearly 60 and I figure I have another 10 to 15 years and I’m going to want to give it up, so I’m looking for somebody.”