The seeds of Danish-born Peter Orum’s success in the U.S. horticultural industry were sown in 1969 on 5
acres of growing fields in St. Charles, Ill., and cultivated with two pairs of hands and a unique idea.

With his wife, Irma, by his side, Midwest Groundcovers was ready to take root.

Today – as his family-based company celebrates its 50th anniversary with year-long programs, special events and a new book on its history – Orum is stepping back to pursue other aspects of the business, and is handing the reigns to his daughter, Christa Orum-Keller, president of the company.

The journey from “there” to “here” is fodder for entrepreneurial textbooks and a testament to following one’s passion with deep commitment and fierce dedication. Within 10 years of starting Midwest Groundcovers, Orum’s vision grew to include 12 employees and expanded acreage. But the foundation for his inspirational career was laid long before he immigrated to the United States in 1965.

Orum gained deep knowledge and understanding of horticulture while training at his father’s two-acre nursery in Jutland, Denmark. Nursery apprenticeships at Spejlborg and Vilvorde Nurseries and his education at the Vilvorde Horticulture School in Copenhagen provided a natural foundation for his budding career.

The organizing, planning, building and management skills he later learned as an engineer officer in the Danish Army Corps of Engineers were essential to his career, and to Midwest Groundcovers’ eventual inception and development. Orum earned lieutenant rank in less than two years and cultivated leadership skills that would qualify him for his first job in the U.S., as supervisory trainee at D. Hill Nursery Company in Dundee, Ill. After months of training, he was promoted to superintendent of propagation, a position he held for almost seven years.

Despite his success at D. Hill Nursery, Orum could not quell his entrepreneurial drive. In 1969, he set out to pursue his passion and from propagating one plant, Orum grew a company. He worked the horticulture side of Midwest Groundcovers. Irma nurtured the business side and helped with day-to-day nursery operations, all while caring for their home and growing family.

“The Midwest companies were built through the collaboration of many talented and dedicated people, and in the early days friends and family worked on weekends and evenings for wages of hamburgers and beer,” Orum says.

Today, Midwest Groundcovers is appreciated for its philanthropy and its significant contributions to the industry the family’s patriarch helped nurture. He’s served on association boards, including the Horticultural Research Institute, where the company has contributed nearly $1 million through the years, and the former American Nursery and Landscape Association, now AmericanHort.

In the past decade, Midwest Groundcovers has provided more than $600,000 in plants and plant material to garden shows, industry events and non-profit organizations. The Midwest Family of Companies’ donations and employee contributions have exceeded $58,000 to charitable Illinois-based shelters such as Hesed House in Aurora and Hope Haven in DeKalb. Likewise, employees annually contribute to the horticulture industry through active service on committees and boards.

Expansive growth

From its original 5 acres in 1969, the Midwest Family of Companies now operates state-of-the-art nursery production facilities on five sites in St. Charles and Virgil, Ill., and in Fennville, Mich., – combined, totaling more than 655 acres. What started as an operation rooting several thousand cuttings in a neighbor’s back yard is now a company that produces more than 20 million plants in one of the broadest collections of species and plant groups of any nursery in the United States. This includes more than 130 varieties of groundcovers, 500 varieties of perennials and ornamental grasses, 250 species of native plants and 275 varieties of deciduous shrubs, broadleaf evergreens, hardy shrub roses, conifers and vines.

From its earliest days, Midwest Groundcovers’ detailed water management and conservation practices have been at the epicenter of its unwavering commitment to sustainability. Orum called on his practical agricultural view and background in engineering to build his company’s green infrastructure, digging ponds and installing pumps and water conservation systems first for the south nursery and then each of the company’s consecutive locations.

“The biggest impact-item we have invested in from the beginning – and continue to invest in – is our water conservation systems,” Orum-Keller says. “We plan and work with civil engineers and the county, and we comply with stormwater runoff requirements. At Midwest Natural Garden, for example, we spent several hundred-thousand dollars regrading, building the irrigation pond and pump station, and cultivating the new collection.”

The next generation

Orum-Keller has her own vision for the company’s future and has already made her mark on the family business. From collecting plant flats as a toddler and making cuttings, weeding, mowing, potting and growing her own small crops under her parents’ tutelage as a youngster, to sales, marketing, logistics, finance, administration, inventory, purchasing and production planning as an adult – she has held nearly every job in the company.

With a master’s degree in business administration and economics from DePaul University and an associate’s degree in horticulture from Joliet Junior College, Orum-Keller is a licensed landscape architect and Illinois Certified Nursery Professional. In the early 1990s, she planned and designed Midwest Groundcovers’ St. Charles headquarters, sales, distribution and trial garden facility, completed in 1994 and updated in 2017.

The 90-acre site houses Midwest Groundcovers’ and Midwest Trading’s sales yards, as well as nine naturalistic landscape display beds and trial gardens. Some were updated and expanded two years ago under Orum-Keller’s direction. The trial gardens serve as unique outdoor classrooms where customers and staff observe and analyze mature plants, and trial and review new varieties. Midwest Groundcovers regularly hosts industry tours, field days and educational lectures at its St. Charles headquarters, providing an advanced-education platform for members of the Illinois American Society of Landscape Architects, American Society of Landscape Architects, Perennial Plant Association and many others.

Among the newer beds located along the front of the St. Charles office building is a modernistic garden created by renowned Dutch designer Piet Oudolf, planting designer of the Lurie Garden in Chicago’s Millennium Park, New York City’s High Line and the Garden of Remembrance in Battery Park. Midwest Groundcover’s Piet Oudolf “New Wave” Garden features more than 5,000 primarily herbaceous plants, including 62 varieties of both native and exotic species growing closely together to create a unique tapestry.

Within the last decade, Orum-Keller and the company’s leadership have increased plant production, offering more than 500 cultivars of perennials, ornamental grasses and locally sourced native plants.

Orum-Keller was the driving force behind Midwest Groundcovers’ purchase of The Natural Garden in 2011, which established the company’s Midwest Natural Garden native growing nursery and enabled it to launch the Natural Garden Natives plant brand. The collection’s sales have grown 44% in the past four years, indicating the success of natives in the Midwest line-up.

She offers a hint about what the next half-century might hold for her family’s business.

“Midwest Groundcovers is well-positioned to carry on its tradition of innovation,” Orum-Keller says. “We are determined to retain the entrepreneurial creativity that built Midwest – indeed, we are driven by it.”

While her dad reduces his day-to-day responsibilities, Orum-Keller says he will remain active, working on projects for the Midwest management team and with the horticulture industry locally, nationally and internationally. Still making his mark on the industry he loves.

“Everything begins with an idea,” Orum says. “It’s what you do with that idea that determines your success. Life is not easy, but it is always interesting.”

For more: www.midwestgroundcovers.com

Glyphosate, a popular nonselective post-emergent herbicide commonly known by the trade name Roundup, has been in the news lately due to several high-profile lawsuits. In August 2018, a jury in San Francisco ordered Roundup’s manufacturer, Monsanto, to pay $289 million in damages to a school groundskeeper who claimed the product caused his cancer. A judge upheld that decision, but reduced the payout to $78 million. Recently, another jury in San Francisco ruled against Monsanto, concluding that glyphosate was a substantial factor in causing the non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in a Sonoma County man.

Bayer, the company that bought Monsanto in 2018, responded by saying there was more than four decades of extensive science and the conclusions of regulators worldwide that support the safety and non-carcinogenic nature of their glyphosate-based herbicide.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) did list glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen (Group 2A) in 2015. But that puts it on the same level as burning wood, eating red meat, high-temperature frying or late-night work shifts — other Group 2A carcinogens.

In 2016, the Environmental Protection Agency’s office of pesticide programs released a report stating there was no evidence of a correlation between glyphosate exposure and the numerous cancer claims. In 2017, EPA released a draft statement that also concluded that glyphosate was not a likely carcinogen to humans.

The difference in the two opposing conclusions comes down to the dose, said Dr. Jeffrey Derr, professor of weed science at Virginia Tech University. Derr addressed glyphosate use in nursery/landscape situations in a June 24 webinar hosted by AmericanHort. In his article in the May/June edition of the Virginia Turfgrass Journal, Derr said the IARC did not consider dose in their analysis, while the EPA did consider it to be relevant to the interpretation of data.

Christine Olinger of the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs also took part in the webinar to answer question about the EPA research. She said she saw some tumors in animals dosed high above the recommended levels.

Dr. Scott Senseman, head of the University of Tennesee’s Department of Plant Sciences, is the past-president of the Weed Science Society of America. In that role, he has drafted a statement on glyphosate cancer risk. However, the challenge is how to communicate science to non-scientists.

“We’re in a society that is made up of a lot of kinds of individuals,” he said. “Trying to come up with a statement that encompasses all of those is a tall challenge.”

In the June 24 webinar, Senseman said the WSSA Committee on Glyphosate Cancer Risk had also drafted a symposium proposal. The symposium would assist green industry professionals with interpreting results from long-term exposure studies, explaining the methodology used to assess toxicological risk, as well as looking at the situation from an attorney’s perspective.

Derr suggested a few alternatives to glyphosate-based herbicides.

“There’s no easy replacement for glyphosate,” he said. “There’s not one particular product that can do everything.”

Glufosinate is the top alternative he recommended. It’s a contact herbicide with some systemic action, available in the trade as Finale, Cheetah Pro and others. It offers activity within 1-4 days and is used at a rate of 2-4 quarts per acre. It carries a warning signal word. Glufosinate is better than contact herbicides on perennial weeds, but somewhat less effective than glyphosate on them. It provides good control of cutleaf evening primrose, doveweed, dayflower and white clover. Derr cautions growers and other green industry professionals to keep glufosinate off the bark of young trees.

If you need weed control and you don’t want to wait 1-4 days, Derr said that diquat is an excellent option. This is the most effective contact herbicide alternative to glyphosate, he said. In fact, it’s the contact part of the popular, effective Roundup QuikPro product (which is glyphosate + diquat).

“On a warm, sunny day, if you treat an area in the morning you’ll see results by that afternoon,” he said.

Diquat carries a caution signal word and is used at a rate of 1-2 pints per acre.

Each day you walk into your office, are you giving consideration to what type of culture you are cultivating? Are you and your team of leaders aware that your actions will dictate whether you are cultivating a culture of compliance or a culture of connection, commitment and community?

Daily, you are faced with important decisions, and how you handle those decisions as well as how you interact with your team, will dictate the culture. Your organization’s culture will ultimately determine what kind of experience your customers and clients will have.

If you were to be placed at the helm of a multimillion-dollar Air Force cargo jet or commercial airliner, under stress and other challenges, there is an absolute necessity for cohesiveness, communication and commitment in order to be the high-performance team required to operate these jets. You already have a great team, but is your team ready to handle their job along with the stress of combat? This is where it is critical to have the right skillsets that will enable you and your team to trust the training, trust the process and trust the people.

To cultivate cohesiveness, connection and commitment in these fast-paced, high-performance teams, there are seven critical skillsets that are always present and encouraged.

Professional knowledge

Professional knowledge is critical and is the foundation to any high-performance individual and team. When your people are equipped with the professional knowledge essential to their jobs, it makes it easier to empower them and trust them to make decisions when things get challenging. Think about a professional pilot and consider how knowledgeable you want them to be. Would you consider your team trained to have that level of knowledge, to execute their job, when hundreds of lives are on the line?

Situational awareness

Situational Awareness (SA) is the ability to understand and comprehend environmental elements, events, and possible scenarios as it applies to time, space, and the collective comprehension of their possible interpretation. There are multiple types of SA to include individual, team, and organizational SA. To make the right decisions at the right time, it is critical that SA be present. SA has been cited as being fundamental to successful decision making in aviation, healthcare, emergency response and many other high stress environments. The lack of SA, according to scholarly documents, has been a driving factor in accidents attributed to human error. To keep your operation performing at its best and being positioned for continued improvement, your people need to have collective SA for any threats that might harm the operations. What kind of training has been put in place that helps to cultivate and reinforce this skillset?

Assertiveness

Assertiveness is defined as confident, forceful, self-assured behavior. Further, assertiveness is being self-assured and confident without being aggressive. When it is time to make business decisions and the fate of your organization is on the line, like flying a commercial airliner with hundreds of passengers onboard, it is imperative that your people are trained, ready and willing to speak up and assert their voice to avert a disaster. When the success of your organization is on the line, your people need to be empowered to speak up and assert themselves, appropriately, to ensure the operation continues smoothly and, in many cases, for the operation to improve. Can your people trust that the leadership team will be ready to listen and acknowledge when they speak up and assert themselves for the greater good of the organization?

Decision-Making

Decision-making is the process and action of making choices, especially important choices, by identifying a decision, gathering information, and assessing alternative possibilities. When you look at decision-making and its application to your environment and how it relates to high-performance teams, you need to be ready and able to make important and significant decisions. Sometimes these decisions will have to be made in very short order, without supervision. To make these time-sensitive decisions, your people will need to be empowered, knowing that they are prepared and trusted to make decisions that can be very critical to the operation and success of the organization. Consider what you can do to equip, prepare, and empower your people to make the right decision, in a moment’s notice, at the right time.

Communication

Communication is defined as the exchange of information or news. When it’s crunch time and critical decisions need to be made, whether in flight at 35,000 feet in the air flying at 600 mph, or when a major deal is on the table for your organization, communication is absolutely essential. When it’s time to make decisions, given the time critical scenario, you want, need and expect your people to communicate. Have your people been empowered and trusted to communicate the critical information at the right time and right place?

Leadership

Leadership is defined as the act of leading a group of people or an organization. Every organization, especially high performing organizations, need true and authentic leadership. They need leadership that is effective at all levels of execution. Leadership in your teams and organization must be further defined as the people that influence others to accomplish the team and organizational objectives in a manner that makes the team more cohesive and more committed to each other, the mission at hand, and the organization.

Adaptability

Adaptability means being able to adjust to new conditions. When your organization or team is moving at the speed of success, it is imperative that members are adaptable. The organization has to empower its people to be ready and prepared to adapt to many different scenarios. When flying commercial jets across the world, there is likely to be some turbulence and there is likely to be some weather formations along the route. In order to get to the intended destination safely, the crew has to be adaptable to go over, under, and around the turbulence and thunderstorms. Being adaptable can only happen when the people have been empowered.

The next time you walk into your office, you should be clear on the culture you are cultivating. The seven skillsets laid out will support the cultivation of a culture of connection, commitment and community.

Jason O. Harris is a leadership and trust speaker, consultant and certified character coach. As a decorated combat veteran, Jason brings unique perspectives gained from his battlefield experience to organizations. Jason’s No Fail Trust™ methodology was crafted from his own harrowing, life-altering experiences, and conveys the importance of cross-generational communication and mutual trust. www.JasonOHarris.com

The first, and perhaps most important, step in maintaining healthy accounts receivable is an unyielding policy against any delay in sending out invoices. Every day that you fail to process and mail an invoice is a day that someone else has the use of your money.

Whether you depend on your accountant or your software to monitor your accounts receivable (A/R), it’s important that the system’s aging report notify you of any accounts that are overdue by 30 days or more, depending on your credit policy, so that you can immediately place a call or send out a reminder. Most software packages can be programmed to produce aging reports automatically.

There’s no need to be concerned about offending a good customer. Any customer who is slow in paying bills will be hearing from other creditors as well. The more casual you allow yourself to become about collecting the money owed to you, the more casual your customers will become about paying you.

Of special importance is red flagging any accounts that are 60 days or more overdue. If that comes to 10 percent or more of your total A/R, you have a serious problem that demands immediate action.

To help avoid burdensome overdue accounts, make sure your credit policy is clearly defined with all new customers, and send it in writing. Explain when and how you invoice, and when you expect invoices to be settled. You may want go with the more-or-less standard 30-day payment terms, or you may be satisfied with 60 days. You may even prefer to require immediate payment as soon as invoiced. It’s up to you to decide on your payment terms.

Whatever your decision, make sure that your employees and your customers are familiar with it. Loose or unclear credit policies are an invitation to slow-paying customers.

Once your credit policy is clearly defined, it’s important to enforce it uniformly and strictly. A sound credit policy will be of no use unless it is enforced.

Here are five steps to a structured procedure that will help you collect accounts once they become overdue.

Don’t waste any time

As soon as an account becomes overdue, place a call to the customer. Even a minor delay on an overdue account reduces the chances that you will ever be paid — the longer the delay, the greater the likelihood that you will never see your money.

There is no substitute for a personal phone call when dealing with an overdue account. Letters and emails may seem sufficient, but they are too easy to overlook. An initial letter or email may be acceptable, but if that doesn’t result in an immediate response, it’s time to make that telephone call.

First, make certain that there is no complaint about your service or products. Then remind the customer that the account is overdue and ask politely if there is an explanation. Sometimes there may be a legitimate reason such as an overlooked or misrouted invoice. Be sure to evaluate your past-experience with the customer. It’s always possible that the company is experiencing unusual problems and deserves a little latitude.

If the customer is having cash flow problems, you may want to offer extended payment terms. In that case, make certain that your terms are clearly understood by the customer.

Understand your customer’s internal procedures

Every company has different procedures for handling accounts payable so make sure your invoices are submitted on time and properly routed. When you are following up on a late payment, talking with accounts payable may not be your best bet. You may get more leverage by talking directly to the person responsible for ordering your service, especially if you explain that you’ll have to suspend deliveries unless the account is paid. If that doesn’t produce results, then it’s time to talk directly with accounts payable.

Persistence pays off

Once you’ve made your initial contact on an overdue account, it’s important to follow up regularly. Companies that are late paying their bills are likely to attach a higher priority to accounts with aggressive follow-up procedures. While it’s important to listen courteously to whatever explanations for being late are offered, it’s equally important to make it clear that you need your money and that you are justified in demanding payment.

When it’s time to put it in writing

If a late-paying customer fails to respond to your most direct and diplomatic collection efforts, it’s time to send a letter clearly stating your intentions if payment is not received promptly. In addition to adding interest charges and turning the account over to a collection agency or a lawyer, you may want to mention that such steps are likely to hurt the customer’s credit rating, something that you would prefer not to do. (See sample letter below.)

“While it’s important to listen courteously to whatever explanations for being late are offered, it’s equally important to make it clear that you need your money and that you are justified in demanding payment.”

The final step

By following the above procedures for collecting overdue accounts, you will minimize the likelihood of the need for taking that final step. Still, you may eventually find yourself dealing with a debtor who is clearly a deadbeat. While the easiest path may be to write off the debt as a loss, it may not be the wisest, at least not yet. You have earned that money, you have a right to it, and you need it. If the amount of money is so small that it’s not worth your time, it will be best to move on and write it off as a bad debt. Every business has to deal with some uncollectible debts. However, if the amount is significant, you shouldn’t be hesitant to put the matter into the hands of a collection agency or a lawyer.

Collection agencies are very good at getting debtors to pony up, but if you’ve never dealt with one, there are some things you should keep in mind. Many are very aggressive and not known for their courtesy and tact, so you should use them only for customers that you are willing to write off. Typically, they charge on a commission basis that will usually be around one-third of whatever they collect.

Overall, using a lawyer as a last resort for collection may be your best bet, but it is also likely to be the most expensive. Many lawyers will be willing to work on commission for collection efforts, but some may take on the job only on an hourly basis. It’s usually best to avoid that arrangement because it could prove to be too expensive to be worthwhile.

Skillful handling of overdue accounts may not be the most enjoyable part of running your nursery, but neglecting accounts receivables can cause hidden and often serious damage to your cash flow.

William J. Lynott is a freelance writer in Pennsylvania, specializing in business management, as well as personal and business finance; blynott@comcast.net.