In 2022, I retired from the nursery. It was one of the hardest and easiest things I’ve ever done—tears of sorrow, tears of happiness. People often ask me how I knew it was time to retire. Here’s my answer.

You’re just going to know. It’s not one of those days when you don’t feel like going to work—that happens all the time. It’s not when you feel the effort isn’t worth the pay, either. And it’s not when you feel like you’re not getting anything done or are completely exhausted. That’s just hard work, and it happens all the time.

It’s a day when you have an epiphany—that there’s nothing left to accomplish—and you realize that the best action moving forward is to let someone else take the helm. It’s not a feeling, but a knowing. I can’t explain the difference, but you’ll get it when it happens.

Nobody enters the nursery or plant-growing business to become wealthy. You might stumble into wealth by accident. The government and the schools that provide student aid for your kids will absolutely call you wealthy. You become what I call “paper wealthy.” All the business owners here know that if you own your own business, every dime you make goes right back into the business to keep growing—growing plants, growing wages, and keeping great people. In a multi-generational business, you don’t retire because you look at your bank account and say, “I’m retiring because I made enough money to retire.”

You retire because your body hurts from lifting plants and working in the field for 30 years. You retire because your mind is exhausted from helping over one million people choose a plant or figure out why their tree died while they were away on a three-month European vacation. You retire because of the sacrifices your family made while you worked retail hours and weren’t home on Saturdays for 25 years. And finally, you retire because there are others who can carry on what you’re so proud of. Providing a fresh brain or eyes that may be better for the future.

I adore plants. My favorite part of every day was putting up the chain and walking around, looking at the plants—millions grown by our nursery, surrounded by beautiful flowers. I even enjoy the challenge of taking a struggling plant and turning it around. The how and why of growing plants is something I love. Making a living at it is a blessing. Your hobby was my work, my livelihood. It’s a gift I will always cherish.

If I had one piece of advice for anyone, of any age, it would be to analyze your sacrifice. When you're doing great things, something has to give. By "give," I don’t mean someone has to be treated poorly, but they do have to understand. Events will be missed, personal time will be minimal, friendships will be lost or never developed. We all have a limited amount of bandwidth.

Like a garden, success takes hard work, patience, good choices, and sometimes, things dying. We are all members of The Dead Plant Society. In life, a few things have to be sacrificed for that beautiful garden you’re hoping to grow. And that’s OK. It’s necessary.

Here’s the secret: communication. It takes five seconds to say thank you to your spouse. It takes 15 minutes each night to make your kid feel heard and loved. All it takes is acknowledgment—even if that acknowledgment is explaining why you can't be there and what you hope your family (or yourself) will gain from it.

My wife said it best early on in our marriage: "When you want to do something, you amazingly always find a way to get it done. When I ask you for time for something you don’t want to do, work always seems to come up." She was 100% right. "When I find time" really just means "I don’t find it important." Find the time. Keep the important things important.

Look up and plan your garden with the understanding that not every plant is going to survive. The real memories won’t come from the finished garden but from the care, the effort, and the joy of watching it grow and mature.

The goal of this newsletter is to bring my perspective, my 30 years of working with plants, my freedom to travel, and my love of plants. A New Perspective is built on an experienced perspective. No politics or weather talk here. That’s for when you’ve run out of things to talk about and entered God’s waiting room.

Every week in this newsletter you will get

A Story
1 Quote
2 Products
3 Photos
4 Tips
5 Links to Great Information or Fun Articles

You just heard the story so let’s get to the rest.

“Gardening is not outcome-oriented. A successful harvest is not the end of a gardener's existence, but only a phase of it. As any gardener knows, the vitality of a garden does not end with a harvest.” ― James P. Carse

Shane’s Dirty (Garden Dirty) Tips