Today we’d like to introduce you to Kacey Cloues.
Hi Kacey, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Garden*Hood was started by plant people for people who love plants. The goal was to build a space where curiosity, creativity, and a sense of community could flourish, where trends could be bucked and boxes could be thought outside of, and where serious gardening could be fun and joyful. There were four original partners and one employee, which was me.
This was back in October 2009, and I was still very new to the hort industry. The original founders of Garden*Hood were amazing teachers, and the fully immersive experience of simultaneously helping to launch a new business while also learning a new language (botanical Latin) and meeting tons of new (to me) people *and* new (to me) plants was thrilling and scary and incredibly rewarding. Uninhibited creativity is a powerful force, and I felt lucky to have been a part of that whirlwind when Garden*Hood was first getting off the ground (or rooting more firmly into the ground, as it were).
Three months after opening I was promoted to manager and put in charge of figuring out how to, well, manage everything from hiring and training staff to setting up SOPs to remembering to buy toilet paper. Oh, and we were still finishing the nursery build-out that hadn’t been completed before we opened. Bringing calm to chaos is when I absolutely shine, and those months of building and training our team, solidifying the care routines for our plants, honing our inventory and services, and networking like crazy to build our customer base and get the word out about our business were an arena in which I felt right at home.
As the business grew and evolved over the years, the original four founders moved on to other adventures, and in 2016 I took over ownership. Much like with gardening, I have made a lot of mistakes along the way and tried some things that didn’t work out. In fact, there are so many mistakes one can make that sometimes it feels like business ownership is just one relentlessly optimistic exercise in pulling up your bootstraps, dusting off your pants, and facing whatever’s next. Again, very much like gardening.
But behind the tedious and sometimes downright terrifying aspects of business ownership there’s still that spark, the passion for always learning more about plants and creating new and unexpectedly beautiful garden moments, no matter how small or how fleeting, and bringing intention to the stewardship of both cultivated and wild spaces. That spark – and the sharing of that spark with others – is what continues to sustain and inspire me 16 years into this journey.
What I love about Garden*Hood is that this business is not solely about plants. It’s actually largely about people. Gardening is an activity that people come to for more reasons than we can count or even know. For many, it has therapeutic aspects, and just as healing looks different for every body and soul, so, too, does gardening look different for every gardener. Our role is to nurture long-term relationships with our customers and their gardens, to really listen to our customers and understand what brings them joy and what’s causing frustration, and then help guide their plant choices accordingly and help troubleshoot challenges as they arise down the line, standing by their side to celebrate their successes and mourn their losses through the seasons and the years. Yes, on the surface we sell plants. But the true heart of what we do is create and support gardeners.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I didn’t start out with the intention of becoming a business owner, so pretty much everything about that has been a challenge. I love managing people, I love working with customers, I don’t even mind paying the bills and doing the chores involved in the general upkeep of the nursery, but the business of being a business owner is definitely not my favorite thing.
By nature our business is highly seasonal. We make 75% of our yearly revenue in the three months of our spring busy season. The rest of the year we are at the whims of nature and the economy. If we have a mild, rainy summer and a cool fall, we’ll see a nice bump in sales. But if we have a brutally hot, dry summer that lasts for four months, we’ll see a corresponding drop in sales and have to dip in to the reserves that we try to save to get us through the really slow months of winter. But, this cycle of feast-and-famine isn’t new to me. That’s the nature of the beast in this industry. It’s challenging, but not unexpected.
For me the most unwelcome challenges have revolved around all the little behind-the-scenes nuances of business ownership that sometimes get in the way of just doing business.
We’ve been impressed with GardenHood, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Our general manager, Halley Beagle, has an amazing way of describing GardenHood that I think really captures its essence. She likens it to an art gallery. Just as an art gallery carefully curates the works of an artist and thoughtfully arranges them in a way that is both accessible and inspiring, so too do we curate the plants we offer at the nursery, choosing ones that are both garden-worthy and well-suited to the challenging extremes of our climate here in Atlanta. Our goal is to offer selections that we believe in, that we know to be strong performers, and that we find interesting and aesthetically pleasing. Sometimes that’s a new flashy trademarked introduction but more often it’s older varieties of plants that have been around for generations and proven themselves to be invaluable standbys. What’s also really important to us is that we source our plants from growers who are here in the South. Our growing conditions here in Atlanta are pretty unique, and we prefer to sell plants that are born and bred, so to speak, here in these same conditions rather than bringing in plants from growers located across the country.
We embrace both native and non-native plants, believing that bio-diversity is important on both a hyper-local and global scale. We also strongly believe in planting responsibly and in helping our customers make informed, educated decisions for their gardens. We also fully support the notion of trying something on a whim just because it speaks to you!
In addition to our retail nursery, we also offer garden coaching and garden maintenance services, all as part of our mission to help grow successful gardeners.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
I don’t love risk-taking. On the one hand, I’m a gardener at heart, which inherently involves a certain amount of risk, so you’d think I’d be totally comfortable with it. But it has actually taken me a long time to come to terms with the idea that despite making what seems like the very best choice given all the known parameters, you’re still at the whim of elements entirely out of your control that may make your choices seem poor. It is a fundamental challenge of the horticulture industry that even the most well-informed professional advice may at times fail. But, that’s where experience comes in, and that’s where the ability to dust yourself off and take another chance becomes really important. Gardening is something you can only learn by doing, and you have to do it season after season, year after year in order to build that deep well of experiential knowledge that helps makes the risks feel less scary.
So, in that respect I have grown comfortable with the idea of letting go of the idea of absolute control and have learned to embrace a more fluid approach to life in general, a concept I try to impart to customers. It’s really important to remember that you may do everything right in gardening and still fail with certain plants. That is okay. It may have been a bad summer or a terrible year for insects or a neighbor’s tree may have fallen and changed all the light conditions in your yard. Let go of the idea that you can and should control your garden and you’ll end up being better able to recognize the small victories that happen everyday.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.gardenhoodatlanta.com/
- Instagram: gardenhoodatl
Image Credits
All photos by Minla Shields.
