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Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the Year End 2003 issue of The Iowa Horticulturist. It is reprinted here with the author’s permission. Visit The Iowa Horticulturist website.
For many tired, overworked people, home gardening is a relaxing hobby that can wipe away the stress of the professional world. For Marilyn and Tom Kenney, home gardening has become their professional world--and yes, has brought with it a little stress of its own.
For twelve years now, the Kenneys have been the proud owners and operators of Skycrest Gardens, a virtual showplace of perennial and annual beds surrounding their home. The gardens, which are composed of more than a dozen display beds and interspersed with four large water gardens, are open on weekends from May until September for the general public to view free of charge.
"The only time I charge is for scheduled bus tours, or if there are garden groups that want to come through during the week when we're not open," Marilyn said. "But for the general public, if they come on the weekends, I don't charge."
Starting the first weekend in May, the couple also sets up tables in their driveway, covering them with unusual plants that can be purchased by visitors. Their main goal is to provide a variety of plants that local nurseries don't carry, items that more experienced gardeners may want to try their hand at growing, but don't know where to find.
"A lot of the plants [I sell] I start from seed, but I also divide perennials in the beds," Marilyn said. "If it's something I have trouble dividing, or doesn't divide well, I'll mail order it from wholesale businesses."
Since the couple's business is located in a residential area, they are restricted from actively advertising with signs outside of their home. Instead, they must find more creative ways to get the word out about their gardens, such as ads in the local paper and magazine articles featuring their operation. Over the years, their best means of generating business has proven to be through word-of-mouth advertising. Oftentimes, customers will take a stack of business cards, handing them out to their neighbors who are interested in where a certain, unusual plant was found.
"We have a lot of return customers, many from the Des Moines area, and a lot from around Iowa," Marilyn commented. "[Our customers return] because there just isn't much availability in local nurseries, especially with the pond plants."
Where Marilyn spends most of her time dealing with the display beds and perennials, her husband Tom has created a gardening niche of his own. He has become somewhat of a local expert at pond maintenance, which includes anything from the equipment, to water plants, to fish.
"[My interest] started when I bought Marilyn a small pre-formed pond about 12 years ago," Tom said, which was around the same time Skycrest Gardens became a business. "We then decided to enlarge it and put one in the front yard, too." He is now the proud operator of four water gardens, all of which he built by himself.
When Tom went looking for water plants for his new ponds, he noticed that the "quality and size were small at local growers." He decided he wanted to provide water gardeners with the opportunity to buy unusual plants for their ponds, just as Marilyn did with unique perennials for bed gardeners.
So now Tom orders water plants perorate from a wholesale operation, then pots them up, fertilizes them, and sells them pond-ready to customers. The couple said it's difficult for local nurseries to sell pond plants because oftentimes they don't have enough knowledgeable people on staff who are familiar with the plants. The Kenney's have a distinct advantage on these businesses, as they not only offer a wider variety of specimens but also have the knowledge to back it up.
One of the most interesting things about the Kenney's is that neither of them has had much of a professional background or education in their chosen areas of interest. Before the couple got started on the horticultural track, Tom worked for the city power plant in Ames, while Marilyn worked as a full-time cosmetologist out of her home and did some seasonal work at Holub's Garden and Greenhouses in Ames. Both said they have done extensive research over the years to gain the knowledge they have today.
"I'm mostly self-taught," Marilyn said, noting that she has over twenty years of practical gardening experience under her belt. "I've spent a lot of time reading up on perennials, but books can only tell you so much. You have to just get out there and find out what works."
One of the most important topics the couple has researched over the years, is how to over- winter their plants in greenhouses. All of Tom's water plants remain in pots during the growing season, so he's able to easily remove them from his ponds in the fall, and set them up in watery conditions inside the couple's 12 x 16 ft. greenhouse.
Marilyn, on the other hand, faces more of a challenge when trying to preserve her annuals through the winter season. Although most people allow their annuals to die off each year, Marilyn has found that it is much more economical to propagate some of the more common annuals and replant them in the spring. The fact that she has an operational greenhouse in her backyard makes the task much easier.
Each fall, before the first frost, she takes cuttings of her most important plants, and puts them in a sterilized, soilless potting mix to keep them thriving until they can be planted outside in the spring. She doesn't bother using a rooting hormone, and said the plants will do fine as long as she is able to get about 2-3 leaf nodes on the coleus and clip a couple of inches on the cuttings of impatiens.
"I stick [the cuttings] in the mix, then water them once every 3-4 days until they get established," she said. "The coleus can rot very easily if they get too cold, so I taper off on the watering during the winter."
Right now, Marilyn has between 12 and 16 flats of coleus potted up in 4.5 inch containers, with each flat containing a different variety of coleus. She also has cuttings of trailing vinca vine, sweet potato vine, licorice plant, impatiens, copper leaf, persian shield, pentas, german ivy, and lantana.
Although the perennials that are planted in the garden will survive over the winter, the leftover potted perennials that didn't get sold during the summer are somewhat more susceptible to extreme temperatures. The Kenneys protect them from the Iowa winters by placing landscaping fabric and 2-3 inches of straw over the tops of the pots.
After the Kenney's have finished their plant preservation and protection for the following spring, all that's left is the heavy maintenance tasks for the ponds and the display beds. "We still have a lot of fall work to do outside yet; we're nowhere near done," Marilyn said. "We cut back the perennials after the killing frost, then if we have time we'll put down a layer of horse manure in all the beds."
Not even winter will bring a sense of peace and relaxation for the Kenney's. Marilyn not only makes crafts to sell at Treasures in downtown Ames, she also works there a couple times a week during the holiday season.
"Once January rolls around, we take about a month off for taxes," she said. "Then around February and March it's time to start all over again with the garden assessments."
It becomes clear that the Kenneys have worked hard to turn their gardening passions into a profitable business venture over the years. According to Marilyn though, for the rest of the green thumbs out there, it may be a better idea to use gardening as an enjoyable pastime rather than trying to turn it into a career.
"People think we have the most wonderful jobs," she says. "But they have no idea how much work is involved."