Last month I came across a gardening nursery in America, DoLeaf, who have a business goal which really excites me as a consumer (and a gardener). I was lucky enough to be granted an interview with one of the founders, Sarah Toton, who told me about life at DoLeaf and how they got started. I thought it was absolutely fascinating so I’m sure you’ll enjoy it too!
First off, who are you and what do you do?
DoLeaf was started by Sarah Toton, Micah Wedemeyer and Ryan Felton. We all met at the University of Iowa around 1999 during our freshman and sophomore years. While none of us grew up on a farm, we all had family members who either farmed or gardened. Micah and Ryan majored in Computer Science and I worked in media studies and English. We kept in touch after college, and as we went our own ways (Micah and I got married in 2005), the three of us cultivated a healthy interest in gardening and bettering our local environment. Micah and I now live in a brick cottage on a quarter-acre lot in Atlanta, GA and Ryan and his wife, Jessica, live in an American foursquare home with a garden in Kansas City, Missouri.
The seed for what would eventually become DoLeaf came about following the massive flooding in Eastern Iowa in 2008. My mother still lives in Iowa and was at a specialty nursery called Dry Creek Hostas when most of my home town was under water. The owner was having a bad year because of the flooding and my mother bought around 10 hostas to ship to . She shipped them to me and they’re some of the best plants I’ve ever got. After that I thought, “if Jeannie from Dry Creek Hostas could easily sell her plants online to supplement her nursery, maybe she would have better sales even when she can’t sell to locals”
The idea started to grow more after Micah and I took a trip to our local Home Depot. Our house’s backyard had been used as a dog kennel before we moved in and there was nothing in our yard but weeds, dog chains and trash. We had been taking routine trips to our local big-box stores every week since we’d moved in and I’d used these opportunities to buy plants and restore the backyard into a yard and garden. After probably our fiftieth trip, Micah and I noticed that we either owned or had seen every plant at Home Depot. In fact, among the rows and rows of green, there wasn’t that much more than 40 different types of plants total. As I started looking at the yards around me, I noticed they too owned pretty much every plant at Home Depot, and not much more. Georgia has a rich variety of native plants, and honestly, some of the plants sold at Home Depot don’t thrive in our yards. At that point,we thought there must be some better resources out there. We found them online.
After doing some searches we noticed that there weren’t many local nurseries still in and around Atlanta, but there were several nurseries that were trying to sell online. In fact, we could find a number of plants that would be great for our backyard online. However, the system for contacting the seller and buying the plants was based wholly on the quality of the individual nursery’s website… which oftentimes was pretty bad. We realized that nursery owners were plant specialists, not web developers. We could help them with their web presence, shopping cart, as well as connect them with 20 and 30 something buyers like us that regularly search, connect, and shop online.
So, to answer the last part of your question.. the “why:” We started DoLeaf so that we could help small independent garden centres and specialty nurseries connect with a new generation of gardeners. We also started DoLeaf to increase our own backyard’s biodiversity and offer a resource for gardeners of all ages, spaces, and skill levels to find something beyond their immediate offerings.
How did you get started? (both with the company and gardening in general)
Out of the three of us, Micah has been collecting and caring for plants the longest. He had plants in his room when he was a teenager and had plants when he lived in dorms and apartments in college. I started buying plants in college too because they’re a cheap way to decorate and they’re soothing to look at. Ryan had some plants in college, but bought several tropicals when he moved to San Diego shortly after college. After college Micah and I moved to Atlanta and started container gardening on the back porch of our apartment — mostly tomatoes, basil, peppers, a ficus named “Filbert” and begonias. By the time the three of us were in houses our passions for gardening had expanded to our yards. I think we were all trying to cultivate our spaces, and getting frustrated with it, when we thought about creating DoLeaf.
What kind of checks would a potential seller have to go through?
We let sellers set up stores whenever they want. It lets them play with the site and see if it’s a good fit for them. We then contact them and ask them a bit about their nursery before we activate. Upon activation, we try to buy a plant or two to check out the quality of shipping. Most of the sellers on the site have other websites too, so that’s also an easy way to check– just do a Google search.
What’s your favourite meal to cook with homegrown ingredients?
Micah loves jalapeño poppers! He grows about three pepper bushes every year and we eat these breaded with and stuffed with cream and goat cheese in the late summer. They’re lovely!
Micah also makes crushed red peppers in the summer that we use year round. They’re best in a sauce with fresh tomatoes, onion and a bit of basil.
Any special events or promotions coming up?
As we ramp up for spring we’ll be featuring a DoLeaf seller the first and middle of every month. We hope to use this time to introduce our sellers to the community and to each other.
Sadly, no promotions yet. But we do ship plants to bloggers that want to check out our inventory.
Note from Josh: for everyone in the UK, we’ve been talking about bringing DoLeaf over here and right now I’m phoning around the HMRC offices trying to find out the legality of sending live cultures overseas. If any nurseries are interested in selling through DoLeaf, please don’t hesitate to contact them for some details
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for such a great write up! We started DoLeaf almost a year ago and have worked to become the best marketplace for people to find and buy plants from independent garden centers and specialty nurseries. Check us out at http://doleaf.com!
You're more than welcome Sarah, thank you for being so accommodating! To anyone reading this, I'm not getting paid for this, just genuinely plugging a great service. Check them out and if you get anything, be sure to show us on Twitter
It’s funny how, listening to their stories, it’s almost like plant collecting or plant raising is a hobby, how someone else would collect stamps or collect coins.
Plants are far nicer to have hanging around your house though
They sound like super cool people, don’t they? But yeah, collecting plants can be so rewarding, it’s always great to keep a few around to gawk at.