The Organic Home Nursery
With no money, no publicity and virtually no plants, Donn and Rachel Tickner started a retail organic nursery. All they really had going for them was a healthy stock of reverence, know-how and determination. A bootstrap business
March/April 1972
By Roberta A. Fanning
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DONN TICKNER PONDERS A CUSTOMER'S QUESTION
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Two years ago this spring—with no money, no publicity and virtually no plants—Donn and Rachel Tickner started a retail organic nursery. All they really had going for them was a healthy stock of reverence, know-how and determination.
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Today, the Tickners' Organic Home Nursery is a showplace of the natural movement and Donn and Rachel's business is doing well enough to put ample food on their table and allow them the luxury of stopping occasionally to savor their rewarding way of life . . .proving once again that people of good faith can build the life they want if they try.
The Organic Home Nursery began—and remains—at the Tickners' home outside Santa Cruz, California . . .where the couple rents a family-of-three sized cottage and 2 1/2 fertile acres for only $100 a month. Doom-and-gloom people originally prophesied failure for the Tickners' new business because of its semi-remote location but, of course, that prediction turned out to be wrong. The nursery has flourished and Donn now says, "We would have been out of business long ago if we were in town. I figure we save $200 a month in this location since in-town rental for nursery space runs a minimum of $300."
In several ways, Donn and Rachel's natural nursery—the only one in the Bay area—is perfectly located. For one thing, it's not that far from "civilization". . . only 12 miles south of Santa Cruz (in a countryside rich with counter-culture folks) and within outing distance of San Francisco. For another, the thermal belt along the coastal range in northern California has excellent "grow weather" . . . and Tickner plants thrive on both summer morning ocean winds that roll in light fog to bathe the foliage, and the relatively frost-free "inland" California winters.
When the Tickners decided to turn their homestead into a nursery, the only stock they had on hand was 15 ivy clippings that Rachel had rooted. They obviously needed many more plants, sets and seedlings than that to launch the business . . . but which ones . . . and how many . . . and, most important of all, how would they pay for that original stock since they had hardly any money at all? It was a large problem . . . which they solved quite handily by scouting out greens to propagate from homes and school yards.
Rachel would knock on a door, flash a charmingly respectable smile and say, "My, what a beautiful plant! Would you mind if I took a little cutting?" She was never refused, possibly because she managed to contain her enthusiasm and never snip anything off at ground level!
Slowly, the Tickners filled the corners and windows of their tiny cottage—they had no greenhouse—with flats of vegetable seedlings and moss runners, coffee cans of citrus trees and pots of herbs. Once, when they did have a few extra dollars, a friend—thinking the new nursery was to be a wholesale operation—advised them to stock 300 bottle brush plants. They did . . . and some of that purchase still lurks around their property lines today. Retailing means selling only one or two plants at a time . . . and 300 seedlings go a long, long way.
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