Growing a native legacy

What started out as a shared passion between two friends, turned into a blossoming business. Located in Orefield, Pennsylvania, Edge of the Woods Native Plant Nursery, a Certified Woman Owned business, was founded by Susan (Sue) Tantsits and Louise Schaefer in 2003. Edge of the Woods is a retail nursery that’s open from April through October. The nursery grows and sells native trees, shrubs and perennials in containers to the public as well as to landscapers.

Katie McDaniel: How did you get into the horticulture industry individually, and how did you end up running a business together?

Louise Schaefer: How I got into the horticulture business was because I met Sue. We worked together at a nature conservancy, and she had started a native plant sale. At that time, I was the volunteer coordinator, and I got a lot of volunteers to help at the plant sale. It just kind of snowballed from there; a couple years later, we were like, well, let’s just have a nursery and sell plants.

Susan Tantsits: I started out playing with plants as a young woman and a new homeowner. I joined the Master Gardener group, which Louise had also, and we actually got to know each other through the Master Gardeners. I realized that I wanted to learn a whole lot more about horticulture and plant science, so I had an opportunity to go to Temple University and get a degree in horticulture; that really sprung me forward. Then I became interested and knew more through our conservation work about native plants. Then the native plant whole idea and environmental horticulture became a very important part of what we’re doing. Then Louise started working with me, and so Louise said to me one day, ‘Let’s start a native plant nursery,’ and I said, ‘OK.’ And the nursery was born.

KM: Through y’all’s years of running the nursery together, what was one of your most challenging moments?

ST: When I went to school, we did not have business in horticulture. I never thought that I would be owning a business, so it was a challenge for Louise and I to start to understand what it meant to run a business, especially for two women that were not in a horticulture business prior to. We wanted to connect with the retail customer, and many native plant businesses are wholesale, but our focus really wanted to be retail. I would say that was a challenge to get ourselves up to speed on all the components it took to run a business.

Our next challenge is now that we’ve had the business for 23-plus years, how do we transition the business to the next generation? Right now, I would say that is Louise and my greatest challenge.

LS: Yeah, and I think another challenge with the retail nursery, we both felt strongly that we wanted to help educate people about why native plants are important. And our focus was really on that a lot. But trying to do that and run a profitable business was challenging in the beginning because it was a lot of education. With the customers that just walk in the door, it takes a lot of time to explain and teach. Sue also has a degree in education, so teaching was important to us, to get the environmental message across. So, balancing that — our primary mission — with a sustainable business, was definitely a challenge in the early years.

KM: Who was/is your mentor?

LS: One of them was a woman named Sally Handlon, who really gave us some good business advice.

ST: She was part of a small business development center, and that’s where we went to first get our education on what it meant to have a business in Pennsylvania.

LS: We would go along with her advice and then every few years we’d be like, “We need to talk to Sally again,’ and she would encourage us.

ST: Barley (VanClief) was the director of the sanctuary with the conservation organization we belong to, and Barley and I went to our first native plant conference together. She encouraged me as part of the management of the sanctuary to encourage native plant communities within the sanctuary. She was director of education at the sanctuary, and she said, “Yes, let’s have a native plant sale. Let’s learn about native plants and bring this to the community that was in the Lehigh Valley.’ We started that about 10 years prior to the time that we started the nursery.

I would say the other person who influenced both Louise and I is Emelie Swackhamer. Emily was our Master Gardener Extension agent with the Penn State Extension. She’s just an amazing horticulture agent and wonderful person. To me, a mentor is anybody who is encouraging us, who’s giving us their expertise, not just in horticulture.

KM: Have you found that more customers coming in seem to know more about native plants and are educated on that topic now, or is that still a challenge?

LS: There’s more awareness. We have a retail nursery, and we have a landscape services division. I do the retail nursery, and Sue does the landscape services. So, she’s out on people’s properties and with clients helping them on a one-to-one level. So that’s education from the first moment. At the nursery, it just depends on who walks in the door. Yes, there’s more people coming in who have heard about native plants and want to do the right thing but still need to understand what that right thing for them might be.

ST: The native plant movement is a very different kind of horticulture. I was involved for a short period of time with PASA, which is an agricultural organization in Pennsylvania, and I loved the organization. I love what they stand for. But I quickly realized that my emphasis is not on agricultural horticulture; it’s very different. We have all these facets of horticulture that we can belong to, and the environmental horticulture is where Louise and I settled into.

KM: Can you go into a little detail about what that mission is for both of y’all?

LS: It’s getting native plants out there into the environment and getting people to understand why that’s important, getting people to actually want to get more plants out into the environment. I have this dream that 100 years from now, they’re going to do horticultural surveys of the Lehigh Valley and say, “Wow, there’s just so much native vegetation there; we don’t know why.’ That would be awesome, and that’s our mission, to get these plants out there so they can continue on and play the ecological role they need to play.

ST: I think it was extremely important, and Louise gave me this idea, because we started the native plant sale with this conservation organization we belong to. It was important to make these plants accessible to people, not just for a weekend. So, our mission was to have a retail opportunity for people to find these plants.

We can read a lot about it; we can hear Doug Tallamy talk a lot about it, but where do we find those plants? 20 years ago, we were at the cutting edge of this, and we have now grown to a sizable nursery, with sizable inventory and a good amount of folks that want to come and visit us from our neighboring states. That was our mission — to make these plants available in the retail setting and have a diverse inventory for them to understand, because nobody’s backyard is the same as anybody else’s. Then the education component — inviting all kinds of organizations to be part of us, from the Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, garden clubs, church groups and so many other organizations that know this is an important part of what we need to be thinking about and supporting.

KM: Can you describe some of your biggest accomplishments?

LS: The biggest accomplishment that I’m most proud of, and I think Sue is too, is the wonderful staff that we’ve developed here. We have incredibly dedicated and knowledgeable staff people who seem to want to stick around with us, which is great.

ST: We tell them now, after 20 years, Edge of the Woods is about them. Louise and I started; we knew what we wanted to accomplish. Many of them came to us, knowing what Edge of the Woods was about, and wanted to be a part of it. Now, they’re the front runners. They are taking our mission, what we wanted to start and giving it to our community and in such a very thoughtful and professional way.