FACING CHALLENGES, DEALING
with disasters, and toughing out hard
times are not things Hank Richardson
enjoys, but he is good at them. Born
on a modest farm in Centre, Alabama,
Richardson and his two older brothers,
Harlan and Jerry, always worked together
seamlessly. But they needed to branch out
from the family operation that grew row
crops and raised cattle and hogs because
it wasn’t big enough to support them all.
Gathering advice from a friend who owned
a greenhouse and garden center, the
brothers came up with a plan to go into the
flower growing business.
They started Richardson Greenhouse in
1974 with a quarter of an acre and some
geranium and other cuttings from their
grandmother’s yard. Hank Richardson
remembers, “We built a 28-by-96-foot
greenhouse and started learning how to
grow and sell plants and delivered them on
a pickup truck with a camper shell on top.
We got a lot of support from our friends
and neighbors in the community and just
learned as we went along.”
Building incremental success over those
first few years, they merged in 1979 with
another local greenhouse, Foliage Farms.
That’s when Dixie Green came into being.
Richardson says, “That first year we had
about three acres of greenhouse and two
delivery trucks but continued to expand
our facilities and markets.”
Today Hank Richardson and his t wo sons,
John and Daniel, have 35 local employees
and add more during the busy seasons.
John is head grower;
Daniel is in charge of
irrigation and trucking and
shipping; Dad Hank runs
the office and keeps up
with invoicing. Altogether
they have twelve acres
of heated greenhouse
space and around eight
acres of outdoor pad
growing space. Yields
are as follows: 250,000
poinsettia plants yielding
$56,440 per acre; 250,000
fall mums yielding $50,363 per acre;
325,000 caladiums yielding $116,667 per
acre; 40,000 calla lilies yielding $152,925
per acre; 15,000 ferns yielding $35,590 per
acre; and 735,000 assorted flowers and
plants yielding $196,206 per acre.
Dixie Green grows annuals for national
store chains and produces up to half a
million spring plants per year. Richardson
says, “We sell our products directly to
wholesale consumers and contract grow
most of our production for Young’s Plant
Farm in Auburn, Alabama. We anticipate
sales on non-contract crops based on
previous year sales and expected growth
in sales.” Since this is a soil-less growing
medium, plants are grown in peat moss,
a blended soil with some additives
that originates in peat bogs in Canada.
Richardson notes, “That’s a lot of peat moss
— approximately fifty tractor trailer loads
per year.”
Over the last four decades Dixie Green
has obtained some high-profile accounts,
including being a major poinsettia
supplier for Walt Disney World in Orlando,
which purchases over 80,000 plants per
year — poinsettias and caladiums —
mostly used at the Magic Kingdom and
Epcot Center. The varieties can come in
half a dozen colors. They also sell to the
Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville and
to the home of university president at
Jacksonville State, as well as independent
garden centers.
Because the business owns six tractor
trailer trucks, five straight trucks with van
boxes, and a small van, they deliver their
own flowers all across the southeastern U. S.
Seventy to eighty percent of what’s grown
is pre-sold and the other 20 percent is used
for annual fundraiser sales.
Richardson adds, “We are proud of
our sales to schools, churches, service
organizations like FFA, and clubs for their
various fundraisers. Sometimes it’s a high
HANK
RICHARDSON
ALABAMA
Sheila and Hank Richardson.
