This field trip was very worthwhile and educational. I am glad it is in the curriculum. It gives us good exposure to the field. All of the places we went to were interesting but out of all of them Wade and Gatton was one of the bigger and more diverse ones we went to. For this reason I wanted to report on him and his company.
Wade and Gatton Nurseries as a company. He has three hundred and forty main nursery acres. That is just his property were he lives and works. It does not include all the land that his sons have. Which I think he said was around eight hundred acres. The company is in its fourth generation. It was started in 1928 and it employs about half of the people that live around there. Mr. Van Wade runs it along with his three sons. His main business is selling shade and ornamental trees. The secondary business the company got into was the landscape design and construction market which is run totally by one of his sons. The third aspect of their business is a mail order company for hostas and daylilies. He has also started growing and selling Christmas trees.
In his first area of business trees he is one of the largest distributers of ornamental shade trees. His location is very important. Where the nursery is located he said it always frosts earlier than anywhere else in the state so he is able to dig the trees earlier than any other nursery. This is important because for successful transplant of trees the trees need to be in their dormant stage. He also has a stream from which he waters from along with many dug wells. This gives him advantage over a lot of other tree nurseries. He digs some of the largest trees I have ever seen. I would think that trees that large would take a lot of care to transplant. He has to use very large machinery to dig and move trees that are that large. He is so well known that he does not even advertise. He is already selling to a five state area. He said that he sold some trees for the Detroit Tigers new stadium. I think being able to sell trees to a large company like the Tigers is pretty awesome. That is how you know your doing well. I think if he were to advertise to states farther away he could get even more business.
His mail order company is doing so well is because he has 2,000 different hostas and between 1,400 and 1,600 different daylilies. He has a huge hosta garden with 120 different named gardens. He has the largest diversity in hostas in Ohio. He takes great pride in his gardens because he designed all of them himself and he has grander plans of continuing all of the gardens in front of his house along the driveway.
Mr. Van Wade as a person seem very honest, generous, and business oriented. During our visit he made us feel welcomed by giving us refreshments and cookies. At the end of our stay he gave us all a plant to take home with us. My hosta is still in its pot by the window in my apartment. I liked how he treated everyone equally because he could have easily only talked to the teachers who know more about plants, but instead he acted like he wanted to teach us. He said he is continually learning himself because he has started surfing the web to keep up to date on what is going on in the nursery industry. He also belongs to 36 different plant organizations and he goes to conferences all the time. Overall Mr. Van Wade is a very interesting man.