Photo: Robert Blackett
Ornamental growers of all sizes are dealing with the effects of COVID-19. While most will no doubt take a significant financial hit, there are ways to glean some sort of positive response out of it.
The following information comes from Cherilyn Smith, Business Development Manager at Milgro Nursery in Newcastle, UT, No. 14 on Greenhouse Grower’s Top 100 Growers list:
According to Smith, Milgro Nursery, a family owned company in Utah and California, distributes indoor potted flowers, green plants, and succulents to major grocery chains and large retailers across the country.
“Over the last two weeks, Milgro has received disheartening phone calls from its customers cancelling orders of hundreds of thousands of flowers due to the COVID-19 crisis,” Smith says. “The cancellations were made by customers days prior to when the plants were set to ship and are leaving Milgro Nursery with a very uncertain future. These three weeks are normally our busiest shipping time of the entire year, with Easter just around the corner.
“These are hard, difficult, and uncertain times for everyone across the globe,” Smith says. Like so many other companies are experiencing, Milgro is left with millions of dollars lost. And the flowers, all these flowers.
“There have been months and months of work, sweat, and hard labor to plant, space, and grow these flowers in time to bloom for the Easter season,” Smith says. “It is heartbreaking to think of these flowers, which bring so much joy, hope, and happiness to individuals and their homes, just going to waste.”
In response, family members and employees at Milgrohave come together to deliver flowers to nursing homes, veterans’ homes, assisted living communities, hospital, schools, businesses, and on the doorsteps of homes in neighborhoods of their communities, even to those in the long drive-thru line at Chic-Fil-A.
Despite these efforts, thousands of flowers still remain with no home. While brainstorming ways to be able to broaden its reach in delivering flowers, the idea of Milgro partnering up with UPS came to mind.
“My father, who started Milgro 40 years ago, and my husband Ben Smith, who has worked at UPS for 16 years, brought this wild idea to both of their bosses,” Smitb says.” Flowers are now being delivered to the UPS hub in Salt Lake City, UT, this week, where each UPS driver will deliver flowers with some packages along their route adorned with a note. The same will take place to the St. George UPS location next week.
“It is our hope that as a community we can grow together, and that these flowers bring hope and happiness during these particularly difficult times,” Smith says.