Front & Center: Plants of the Wild supplies residential landscaping, reforestation
![Kathy Hutton manages Plants of the Wild in Tekoa. The nursery grows 125 species, from grasses and wildflowers to shrubs and trees. (Michael Guilfoil)](https://thumb.spokesman.com/uO6q6eDqVn9RLDznlEJuDvMVKgE=/600x0/media.spokesman.com/graphics/2018/07/sr-loader.png)
TEKOA – Kathy Hutton grew up with plants of the wild.
“My dad was into native plants before it was cool,” she explains. “He dug them up every time we went camping, and essentially started a native plant nursery on our little 10-acre ranch outside Reardan.
“At the time, I didn’t appreciate the importance of native landscape. And I suspect our neighbors thought my dad was a little strange, because his approach was so different from the formal look most people liked.
“But wildlife loved it. We had quail, pheasants, Huns (Hungarian partridges), hawks … everything.”
Interest in drought-resistant species and natural landscapes has blossomed, thanks in part to Tekoa-based Plants of the Wild, which Hutton has managed the past 27 years.
During a recent interview, she discussed how taking a minimum-wage job after college was a smart career move, her favorite native flower, and why people shouldn’t dig up plants in the wild.
S-R: What did you raise on your Reardan ranch besides native plants?
Hutton: We had cattle, chickens, turkeys, sheep, pigs – a little bit of everything. Most of them were 4-H and FAA projects. We also had some donkeys rescued from the Grand Canyon.
S-R: Did you have a favorite subject in high school?
Hutton: Any of the ag classes, but horticulture was my favorite. I also played clarinet in band.
S-R: How about outside of school?
Hutton: 4-H and FFA were my main activities. I was on the FFA national parliamentary procedure team between my junior and senior year, and went back to Carthage, Missouri, and the national convention in Kansas City.
S-R: Did you envision a particular career for yourself?
Hutton: I was leaning toward agriculture communications because I loved public speaking and wanted to promote agriculture. Then I took a horticulture class at WSU taught by Kurt Schekel, and switched majors to horticulture. That’s when I first heard about Plants of the Wild. We used their catalog as a resource to help someone landscape 20 acres with native plants.
S-R: What brought you to Tekoa?
Hutton: We moved here when my husband, Dan, got the high-school ag teaching job 30 years ago. The superintendent asked what my degree was in. When I said horticulture, he said, “There’s a nursery right down the road. You should go see it.” That’s when I remembered the catalog and got really excited. The next day, I started at minimum wage to get my foot in the door, and within three years I was manager.
S-R: What was the business like then?
Hutton: A lot different than it is now. We were strictly wholesale – mostly government contracts – because there wasn’t much interest in native landscaping. Today we’re among the biggest native plant nurseries in the Northwest, and 20 percent of our sales are retail.
S-R: What spurred interest in native plants?
Hutton: A couple of things. One was the water shortage in California and some of the Southern states, and rules that prevented watering lawns. Also the desire to create a relaxing space that reminds people of when they went camping.
S-R: How do you define native plants?
Hutton: Everyone defines it differently. It could be native to Whitman County, the Northwest or the whole United States. In your own backyard, native can be whatever you want it to be.
S-R: Shoppers can get 8-foot-tall arborvitae for less than $20. If they come here, they pay that much for four 8-inch-tall lupines. Can that cause sticker shock?
Hutton: Yes. But when you’re doing a low-water, low-maintenance landscape, it’s better to transplant smaller plants, because they’ll adapt without irrigation and take off quicker.
S-R: Is your business cyclical?
Hutton: Definitely. During the weak housing market a few years ago, nobody was planting, and the government didn’t have money for restoration. A lot of nurseries went out of business and dumped plants on the market at pennies on the dollar, leaving us with inventory. We might not have survived if we weren’t a division of a larger company (Tekoa-based Kentucky bluegrass processor Seeds, Inc.).
S-R: What lesson did you learn?
Hutton: To be patient and not freak out.
S-R: Did any of your college courses teach you how to be a good manager?
Hutton: I took of management and accounting classes. Accounting isn’t one of those glamorous subjects, but it’s really important when you need to understand cash flow.
S-R: How has technology affected your business?
Hutton: We have a very popular shopping cart website, which I never would have imagined a native plant nursery needing. And we quit sending out catalogs in 2012. Everything is on the internet, and we can ship pretty much anything UPS.
S-R: What’s the best time to plant?
Hutton: Early spring or fall, to take advantage of natural moisture.
S-R: What’s your business philosophy?
Hutton: We pride ourselves on responding to customers quickly. One gal called and said, “Working with your nursery has been fantabulous!” That’s our goal.
S-R: What do you like most about your job?
Hutton: The people I work with, the customers, and teaching people about native plants.
S-R: What do you like least?
Hutton: Lately, it’s been trying to find new employees. We’d grow if we could hire more help, but we don’t have a huge labor pool here.
S-R: How much do new employees earn?
Hutton: They usually start at minimum wage, like I did. But we offer good benefits.
S-R: What’s been your best idea?
Hutton: I can’t claim it as all my idea, but our newest product is called a Loaded StrawBullet – pelletized mulch with seed glued to the outside, and dropped into burn areas by crop dusters. When it rains, the glue dissolves, the mulch covers the seed, and the plant grows. It’s an exciting product that many people in our company worked on.
S-R: What else is new?
Hutton: We’re constantly working on germination techniques. We grow 125 different species – from grasses and wildflowers to shrubs and trees – and it changes every year. Our success depends on learning how to germinate seeds without nature.
S-R: For instance?
Hutton: Say a seed has to go through a bird’s stomach to burn off its seed coat. We’ll soak it in sulfuric acid to simulate that process. If it normally has to lie on the ground for three years, we’ll give it 30 days cold, 30 days warm, 30 days cold to make it germinate faster. We’ve put seeds in cement mixers with rocks and tumble them, run over them with forklifts – whatever works.
S-R: Will huckleberries ever be grown commercially, taking pressure off bear habitat?
Hutton: We sell huckleberries. It’s challenging to grow them, but people are starting to get encouraging results.
S-R: What’s your favorite native plant?
Hutton: Mountain kittentails. They’re a little wildflower with bright blue blossoms that let you know spring is coming.
S-R: What has this job taught you about yourself?
Hutton: That I’m able to do more than I thought I could when I first took over. A turning point was realizing my job is not to sell someone a product – it’s to help them solve a problem.
S-R: Anything you wish you’d done differently?
Hutton: I used to think I had to do everything myself, so I worked really long hours and almost burned out. Eventually I learned to trust people to do their job.
S-R: How many hours a week do you work now?
Hutton: About 50 in spring and fall. But I take time off in winter and summer, which works out well with my husband’s schedule, because he’s now a principal, and his slower times are winter and summer.
S-R: What’s some advice you give retail customers?
Hutton: I encourage them to find a picture of what they want to recreate in their backyard, then let us help them pick out plants to make that happen.
S-R: What mistakes do people make?
Hutton: Killing plants with kindness by leaving their irrigation system on. Low-water-use plants don’t like that.
S-R: What’s your most popular wholesale item?
Hutton: Sagebrush. Six- to 10-inch-tall seedlings sell for around $1.25. We’ve grown up to 1 million a year for restoration projects at Hanford and the Army’s Yakima Training Center.
S-R: How about retail?
Hutton: That varies. This year it’s showy milkweed, a host for the monarch butterfly, which has been in the news. We sold more showy milkweed in the past two years than in the previous 28. Those come in 3 ½-inch pots and retail for $4.
S-R: What’s the outlook for your industry?
Hutton: I see a great future, both in terms of reforestation and residential landscaping.
S-R: Who’s best suited for this career?
Hutton: Someone who doesn’t mind getting dirty. It’s hard work, but very rewarding.
S-R: By the way, do you recommend people harvest plants in the wild, like your dad did?
Hutton: Never. Most things don’t transplant well, so you just end up killing them. Then you don’t have a plant, and the forest doesn’t have a plant, either. Back when I was growing up, there wasn’t an alternative. Today you can get plants native to your area at most nurseries, and they’re much more likely to survive.
Writer Michael Guilfoil can be contacted at mguilfoil@comcast.net.