Plant Supply Update: Shrub and Tree Stocks Expected to Remain Tight for the Foreseeable Future

By Janeen Wright|September 21, 2021

The unexpected demand for trees and shrubs in 2020 found growers discharging one debt to pay another, as they borrowed from nursery stock set aside for 2021 sales. Compound that problem with 2021 ushering in a major storm with extended temperatures only a polar bear could love, followed by a dose of crippling summer temperatures in the West, and it all adds up to crop losses and supply chain headaches. Ergo — it’s going to take some time for the industry to adjust to the increased demand with the longer production times needed to produce shrubs and trees. And the process will go much smoother with increased cooperation up and down the supply chain.

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Whether grown as a shrub or small tree, the soaring lavender blooms of Vitex ‘Summertime Blues’ (Plant Development Services) offer a dazzling display in warmer months. Hardy in Zones 5a to 10b.
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The large, saucer-shaped blooms of Hibiscus ‘Head Over Heels Desire’ (Star Roses and Plants) make a bold statement against its rich, burgundy foliage. Hardy in Zones 4 to 10.
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‘Perfume Princess’ (Anthony Tesselaar Plants) is one of the earliest and longest flowering of all daphnes. It offers a progression of fragrant blooms along the entire stem and offers evergreen foliage. Hardy to Zone 7.
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Flower Carpet Mini Cherry (Anthony Tesselaar Plants) is a new addition to the Flower Carpet rose range. It has masses of cherry-sized cherry-red colored flowers on a shorter bush, making it perfect for edging, hedging or just massed color.
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‘Screen Play’ from Plant Development Services is a new holly hybrid with a well-branched, dense upright habit. Glossy, spineless, large, light-green foliage is tinged with bronze. It features deep-red berries in early winter, and is excellent for hedges and screens.
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Pacific Coprosmas from Anthony Tesselaar Plants are quick growing, bushy in shape, and breathtaking. Lush, vigorous, and stunning, they can be planted at any time. Best of all, these are super-low-maintenance plants. Because the Pacific Coprosmas are more bushy shaped than other coprosmas, they are ideal for gardens or patio pot plants but also make perfect edging or hedging border plants.

GoMaterials, a wholesale marketplace to source landscape materials, put out a 2021 Plant Shortage Report earlier this year stating that almost 90% of plant shortages in the South are for shrub, perennial, and groundcover container material under 7 gallons, with a few exceptions, and the demand for 3-gallon varieties is on the rise. More than 60% of wholesale nurseries participating in the GoMaterials survey said they expect at least a couple of years before things return to normal.

“I agree that five to seven-plus-gallon material will be extremely tight for the next five to ten years,” says Kevin Northrop, Vice President of Marketing and Operations at Plant Development Services. “Certain slower growing shrubs and trees will be limited, even in 1- to 3-gallon containers, for at least three years.”

Trees are an even more complicated challenge right now, with multiple levels to the supply chain that can impact overall product availability. Suppliers not only have to account for the amount of budwood available to bud new trees such as Cercis, but they also need to keep tabs on the supply of seedling understock, according to Kristen Pullen, Woody Ornamental Product Manager/International Business Assistant at Star Roses and Plants.

“In many cases, the understock supply chain is not controlled by the same people that control the budwood supply chain, which makes management of the production difficult,” she says. “The two production pieces need to be in lock-step moving forward to be able to accurately fulfill forecast numbers.”

Trouble Sourcing Shrubs and Trees Aren’t the Only Problems

Growers may not be as lucky when fulfilling orders. The by-product of increased demand is the need for more space. It takes time to expand, and to complicate things further, nursery and greenhouse operations have reported delays in planned expansions due to supply chain issues with building material. Pullen recommends nurseries use bareroot inputs to provide quick-turn crops. With less residency time, multiple rotations of crops can be grown and sold out of the same footprint of space.

Another supply chain concern for nursery growers is sourcing pots, particularly when it comes to branded containers. In some acute cases, Pullen says she has heard of suppliers requiring 300-day lead times. The growers who seem to be faring the best are those committed to forward orders or at least having some commitments in place with suppliers and this pattern extends to live products, as well.

Undersupply Depends on Your Perspective

“Given production bears the cost of dumping or carry-over of any surpluses, it can conversely be argued, with stock being sold out and price increases, that stock levels are at optimum production numbers for the supplier side of the equation,” says Philip Townshend, COO at Anthony Tesselaar Plants.

Townshend says he’ll be interested to see if in the future we experience a boom/bust type of effect, with producers laying down increased numbers because of high demand now, only to see pushback down the supply channel resulting in dumping or carrying over product.

“Cooperative production planning up and down the supply chain and not seeing pushback from customers at their discretion (i.e., when weather and other events impact retail) would ensure that there is more availability for the sector as a whole, but it seems this isn’t factored into consideration and suppliers are expected to take on all the risk of speculative production,” Townshend says.

Despite the challenges, demand for shrubs and trees is up along with everything else. Northrop predicts a greater emphasis on breeding for colorful blooms and foliage, allowing shrubs to serve as permanent color in the landscape.

“We will also see a continued focus on compact sizing and drought tolerance,” he says. “From a grower perspective, we will see movement toward quicker turning, higher-margin items.”