Business Spotlight: Wickman's Garden Village LLC

Poinsettias are big business at Wickman's Garden Village. The Springfield nursery is covered in 10,000 of the deep red plants each Christmas season.

"We expect them all to be gone by the time the holidays are over," says nursery manager Nikki Petitt.

The holiday season runs Thanksgiving to New Year's Day, and Petitt says sales peak during the first two weeks of December. Even as holiday sales wind down, Wickman's employees are getting 25,000 geraniums ready for spring.

"In the nursery business, you've always got to work several months ahead of the game," says owner Glenn Kristek, whose store registered $6 million in 2007 sales.

Kristek keeps his staff of 65 to 100, depending on the season, ahead in seven areas: indoor plants, lawn and garden, flower shop, residential and commercial landscaping, greenhouse, boutique and the Saltbox gift shop. There also is an operation in Monett.

But it all started 86 years ago with one man growing fresh produce on five acres.

Emhoff produce

Glenn and Donna Kristek have owned Wickman's since 1972. He manages the business, and she works part time.

The 5,000-square-foot retail building and 22,000 square feet of greenhouse space are located on the Springfield parcel where it all began. In spring 1922, Floyd Emhoff put up a small greenhouse, cultivated a big truck garden and began to sell fresh garden vegetables.

Emhoff and family ran the business until 1946, when Gus and Francis Wickman purchased it. The Wickmans added a flower shop a year later and a nursery and landscaping services in 1964.

In 1959, Kristek came onto the scene as a college student working part time. He planted trees, trimmed shrubbery, hauled topsoil and "whatever needed doing." Then, in 1963, when Kristek was eyeing a job in health care, Gus Wickman took the Kristeks to dinner to ask, "How would you like to get into the business permanently?" With that, the Wickmans and the Kristeks became equal partners, and when Wickman was ready to retire in 1972, the Kristeks bought the other half of the business.

Holiday staging

Christmas is always a busy time around Wickman's, usually beginning with the annual holiday open house, which celebrated its 50th year in November.

Bringing the showy Christmas flowers to a stage that attracts a shopper's attention is a process that takes about six months.

Stock plants arrive at Wickman's in May. After grafting, pruning, fertilizing and re-potting several times, the business has up to 10 shades of poinsettias - including white, lavender and variegated - ready in time for the Christmas open house.

Holiday floral arrangements have been a big business for more than 25 years. Kristek estimates that 35 percent of the more than 300 arrangements sold each season are custom designs.

Floral shop manager Steve Waddell, who is also a past president of Ozarks Floral Association and a charter member of the Floral Academy of Missouri, handles in-home holiday decorating for a number of regular Wickman's customers. Among them is Diane Wallace, of Monett, wife of Community National Bank owner Mike Wallace.

"Steve's been doing our Christmas decorations for about eight years," she says. "He does the tree and ornaments, wreaths, bannisters and flower arrangements. All his work is really unique."

With the Wallaces in a new house this Christmas, Waddell offered special treatment.

"When Steve went to market, he took color boards of all our walls and carpeting and brought back accessories that fit perfectly with the house," she says.

At other times of the year, the attention turns to Easter lilies, dogwoods, fall mums and tulip bulbs. Many of those plants are used in Wickman's commercial and residential landscaping business.

Don Woods, owner of Woods Supermarket in Bolivar, is a Wickman's landscaping customer.

"Wickman's crew has been keeping my two-acre lawn in good shape for 10 or 15 years," he says. "They take care of the trees and shrubbery and plant tulip bulbs and do everything it takes to make the place look good."

Flower and shrub sales make up 37 of Wickman's business.

Shoppers also can purchase bejeweled Berek sweaters, leather handbags, Otazu jewelry, Old World glass ornaments or picture frames and other gift items at Saltbox. Although smaller than the Springfield site, Kristek says the Monett division offers many of the same lawn and garden services.

"Of course," he says, "we've got a good supply of poinsettias there, too."

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