Nurseries Strengthen Roots in Ventura County
No one has had a better view than Brad Bowers of the rapid rise of Ventura County’s nursery industry, which now produces the county’s second biggest cash crop.
As production manager for Valley Crest Tree Co., Bowers helped guide the transition over the last decade of the company’s inventory from narrow wedges of leased land under power lines in Los Angeles County to wide swaths of Ventura County farmland, offered by orange growers unable to turn a profit.
Valley Crest has bought hundreds of acres in the bucolic Santa Clara River Valley, bulldozing 20,000 citrus trees to establish a state-of-the-art nursery to fuel a building boom taking place in California and other parts of the West.
Others have followed suit, triggering a revenue surge that in 10 years has seen the value of the trees, plants and turf used for landscaping nearly triple to $222 million, second only to strawberries.
“It was all oranges when we first got here, but the whole area has changed,” said Bowers, who oversees production on about 350 acres in Ventura County.
“It’s all tied to construction,” he said. “If you get a few more big players here, I can see the nursery industry becoming No. 1.”
Nursery stock is among dozens of high-value crops that helped push Ventura County farm income to a record $1.3 billion in 2004, according to the county’s annual crop report. Strawberries were the top crop, generating $363.6 million.
Nearly 30 crops generated at least $1 million in gross sales last year. Overall, farm revenue increased $272 million from 2003 to 2004.
Few industries have risen as rapidly as the nursery business. Nursery stock generated $82.5 million in 1994 and was ranked fifth on the county’s crop report that year. In 2003, the value was pegged at $173 million, and nursery stock for the first time moved into second place on the crop report. That year, the county was the third-largest producer in the state of nursery products, flowers and foliage, behind San Diego and Monterey counties.
The 2004 total includes the gross value of trees, potted plants and turf, much of which were shipped throughout the western United States to landscape new housing projects and commercial developments.
“Ironically, it’s all fueled by the housing boom, which seems to be happening everywhere but here” in Ventura County, said Rex Laird, executive director of the county farm bureau. Local voters have enacted tough growth-control laws that put much of the farmland off-limits to development, he said.
The industry’s rise is evident along California 126 in the Santa Clara River Valley. The rural highway cuts through Ventura County’s agricultural heartland. From Santa Paula to Piru, tens of thousands of citrus trees have been removed in recent years to make way for potted plants, bushes and trees laid out in orderly rows on the coffee-colored soil.
San Gabriel-based Norman’s Nursery started expanding into the area about five years ago and now has 200 acres of nursery land along that stretch of highway. It’s one of about a dozen sites the company maintains statewide.
“It’s an ideal climate and we really enjoy being out there,” said Charles Norman, president of the family-run operation. “For those of us located in that area, I’d say 80% of what we do leans heavily toward commercial landscaping and construction.”
Family-owned Boething Treeland Farms was well ahead of the curve, expanding some 40 years ago from its first nursery in the San Fernando Valley to acreage in eastern Ventura County. Today, about a third of the company’s 700 growing acres are in Ventura County. The Woodland Hills-based nursery is in the process of adding 27 acres near Moorpark.
Boething’s expansion into the county is also fueled largely by building booms in cities such as Phoenix and Las Vegas.
“A lot of nurseries are shipping to those locales [Arizona and Nevada] because the demand is there,” said Bruce Pherson, a Boething official.
