When you reach high to hang that first flower-filled basket of the season, it’s an event – a celebration of all the beautiful things to look forward to this summer. But do you ever wonder where these colorful hanging planters of geraniums, impatiens, begonias, and ivy come from? Whose hands create them, whose expertise nurtures them until they find their way home with you? While we don’t create all the hanging baskets we offer, many of them are lovingly and skillfully hand-planted and nurtured in-house by our own Farms team – that portion of our team who grows our collection of trusted, high-quality plants for your home and landscape. Basket production is a fascinating cooperation between planning, botany, teamwork, and technology that brings thousands of beautiful hanging baskets to our store each spring. We’d love to give you a peek inside the process.
It Starts Way Before You Think
This year’s selection of blooming baskets began their lives as a plan on a spreadsheet way back at the end of last spring. Considering which beautiful blooms were most sought-after this spring and peeking ahead at new possibilities in the plant catalogues, our team in the Greenhouse develops a list of the varieties and combinations we want to offer as hanging baskets for the following spring – a mere ten months away.
From this list, the Farms team determines how many plugs – or tiny baby plants – they’ll need to complete the plan and then places an order with our grower partners as early as July. To plant thousands of hanging baskets filled with geraniums, begonias, impatiens, ivy, vinca vine, and more requires tens of thousands of seedling plants – grown together by the dozens in flat trays. By the time the babies arrive in January and February of the following year, a complete supply of new 12” hanging fiber pots is waiting for them too.
Then the Fun Starts
Weather permitting, planting begins the first week of February. When thousands of baskets are the goal, production must be swift and efficient, and the Farms team has the process perfected – with the help of a conveyor-driven potting machine. After one member of the team loads empty baskets onto the conveyor, the baskets move to the next step where professional potting mix automatically drops into each one. Down the line again, more members of the team carefully nestle baby plugs into the soil according to the recipe set for that type of basket. From there, another set of hands transfers the newly planted baskets to racks that take them to the production greenhouse floor. There the baskets grow and develop for a few weeks under the close supervision and care of the Farms team who take great pride in what they do.
Our Head of Farms, Sheldon Garcia, says the annual hanging baskets are one of the team’s favorite things to grow. To watch as these tiny plants – that start no taller than your finger – transform over time into stunning blooms is to experience nature’s beauty firsthand. As the production floor fills with more baskets, containers, and other potted plants, space becomes a premium, and it’s time for the hanging baskets to head skyward. One by one, each basket is passed hand-to-hand up a ladder and then hung on a motorized cable that winds back and forth high above the floor. Now hanging, each basket is part of an automated system that provides water and fertilizer to each basket on a schedule that’s programmed specifically for the plants it contains.
April is the Time to Shine
Finally, in early April, the baskets are fully grown, and it’s time to leave. Another small bucket brigade brings baskets down from the ceiling and onto racks which are loaded onto trucks – two to three trucks a day, two to four days a week – headed for the store. This pace picks up even more as May arrives. Then in the Greenhouse, we watch with pride as the baskets leave the store with you –destined to flourish high above doorsteps and patios across Omaha for the rest of the summer.
Making Omaha More Beautiful with Each Basket
Springtime is for flowers, and hanging baskets deliver them in droves. Come take a look in the Greenhouse – the warm weather is here, it’s time to bloom, and we’ve got a hanging basket with your name on it right now.