Back in bloom: in a bleak economy, our small business of the year relieved its growing pains by making color count.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: COVER STORY

Mike Becker lifts his foot from the pedal, and the electric cart shudders to a stop. He pushes his sunglasses back on his cap. Like a gift from heaven, dripping clouds drift in on warm, southerly wind--good growing weather. He's surrounded by acres of plants in checkerboard squares: the brilliant blues, whites and yellows of pansies, rich crimsons and oranges of Belgian chrysanthemums, the deep greens of ligustrum and holly. It's flat as a griddle in the Pender County farmland. Serene, tranquil, a spiritual quiet. And devilishly deceptive.

A few minutes later, Becker steers the cart to a shed. Here, a sense of urgency prevails. Black, plastic pots of pink muhlenbergia ornamental grass trundle across the rollers of a conveyor, then get scooped up three or four at a time by a half-dozen workers who trot them to a table. A rhythmic popping follows another worker rapidly jabbing at the pots. "That's the air gun," Becker explains. "These are going out today, and he's stapling labels on them with the customer's name, their color, botanical name and retail price." The tags read Homestead Gardens, Davidsonville, Md., serving retail and landscaping customers around Baltimore and Washington, D.C. It's Wednesday afternoon. Homestead just called in an order for muhlenbergia in 1-and 3-gallon pots, plus hydrangea, butterfly bushes, liriope and other plants, about 500 in all. They must be in Maryland by Friday. Customers will be waiting Saturday morning.

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Inside a small, gray office building, telephones ring on the desks of Derek Gardner, Donna Burgan and Susan Bryan. Like Becker trained in horticulture and botany, they're in sales, taking orders from customers as far away as Connecticut and New York. They want plants by Friday, too. In another room, shipping manager Scott Linke checks a list of local owner-operators, cobbling together trucks and drivers for fast runs north through the mess that's Eastern Seaboard traffic.

At Johnson Nursery Corp. in Willard--BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA'S Small Business of the Year--David and Jill Johnson and their employees will grow and sell to more than 400 wholesale customers roughly a million pots of flowers and ornamentals valued at about $5.5 million this year. Nature takes sunshine and rain to grow its plants. Here, every day, it takes a leap of faith. This, as he describes it, is controlled chaos, held in check by a tightknit team, some of whose members have worked here 30 years. At any one time, the nursery is juggling 1,000 varieties of woody plants such as crape myrtle, along with blooming annuals and perennials, from petunias to vinca. They're known in the trade as "color." Some, such as tiny new pansies or spindly gardenia cuttings, are beginning life in rich potting soil.

Others are head-tall, rooted in heavy tubs that take two workers to wrestle. Each has its own nutrient needs, growth rate and maturity date, its own thirst, temperature and temperament.

Some plants must be timed to Johnson's customers in the North, where spring arrives a month or two later than in the Carolinas. Others have to be suited to the cool, rocky soils of western North Carolina or the warm, sandy yards of beach towns in Virginia and South Carolina. There are no leisurely advance orders. Most come midweek, when, for instance, a Boston garden center can gauge the coming weekend's weather and customer demand. "When I came in this morning, we had the equivalent of one large truck and a small one going north" to Richmond and beyond, says Burgan, sales manager. "Now, at this point--12:30 on a Wednesday--we have three." Thursday orders from the Carolinas and Virginia also are delivered on Friday.

Trends ebb and flow. "This industry," Johnson says, "is getting as tough as the retail fashion business," forcing nursery operators to try to predict buyer preferences months or a year or more beforehand. Guess wrong, and unsold plants end in the nursery's dead pile or on sale at slashed prices at its Saturday benefits for local charities and civic clubs, which get half the proceeds. Or Johnson Nursery finds itself with too few in its botanical pipeline, and its garden-center customers are left with empty plant racks. That means lost sales. Guess right, and an 18-cent mum planting will grow into a $7.95 beauty in the few months it takes to reach garden-center size.

Weather is both...