As published in the September 2022 issue of Greenhouse Management Magazine’s Increasing Profits Supplement
Jerry and Jenny Simpson, owners of Creekside Nursery / Gardening with Creekside, see increasing profits. Creekside is a grower-retailer located in Dallas, North Carolina serving their surrounding community. They also have a YouTube channel focused on gardening called, “Gardening with Creekside”. In 2014, their video strategy began by posting videos to their Facebook page trying to sell mums before a hurricane hit. Now their channel has over 70,000 subscribers where they publish five videos a week.
“It’s turning into its own business unto itself,” Jenny says. “Our nursery is so remote that it was an attempt to reach local customers to let them know about Creekside – the products we have and the plants we grow because we were in that weird time when we didn’t know how to advertise.”
“Now we have people coming from all over the country to visit Creekside,” she says.
Greenhouse Structures
“For greenhouse structures, Creekside relies on Atlas Greenhouse.”
-Greenhouse Management magazine
Gardening with Creekside purchased two snow arches to support the large number of hanging baskets they produce. Also, they recently purchased a newer-style A-frame gutter-connected structure.
“We’re using that one as the main area for our retail shopping,” Jerry says.
Jerry and Jenny both tell GM magazine their Atlas sales rep, Heath Spradley, is a major reason why they do business with Atlas Greenhouse and will continue to do so in the future. Also, the snow arches are a perfect example of that relationship and Heath’s expertise paying off.
“We’ll tell Heath what our situation is, what we want to do with the product and then Heath says, ‘Okay, let’s go this route,'” Jenny says. “We’re in North Carolina — we don’t get a lot of snow. The greenhouses we have are rated for snow loads because he knows that we have tons of hanging baskets and can take our growing conditions, our needs as a grower and match us with the best product that they have. Every time we’ve needed anything or there’s a question, they’ve been wonderful.”
Jerry adds that, amongst supply chain issues in the last year or so, Atlas hasn’t had any delays.
“We haven’t had any issues with them at all,” he says. “There were zero.”
Jenny tells GM magazine, “We work with Laura and Aaron from Garden Answer, another huge YouTube gardener. They had just an unheated hoop house, and they were watching our videos when we were putting together our production houses. Jerry got them in contact with Heath, and he got them all set up with the conversion kit that they needed.”
“For me, Atlas is so great to work with because they listen to you — no matter the size of your company,” Jenny says.
Learn more about Creekside’s Greenhouse model, The Grand Peak, here.
