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Family rootsBy Pamela Cotant
While the industry has changed dramatically from the time his father got into the trade in 1951, some things remain the same. Ganshert has built his business on word-of-mouth referrals, helped by a strong economy in the Capital Region. "If you do one good job it's going to lead to another," said the younger Ganshert, who operates Ganshert Nursery and Landscapes, 5284 Lacy Road in Fitchburg. He works in an industry with a reputation for not calling people back. "We got a lot of jobs just because we showed up," said Paul Ganshert, a board member of the Madison chapter of the Wisconsin Landscape Contractors Association. Paul Ganshert's landscape designs differ from his father's because now it's no longer a given that someone will live in the same house for decades, and most people want plants that require no maintenance. The younger Ganshert has learned a number of trades along the way because around the 1960s, customers began to expect landscapers to handle all aspects of the business from planting trees to building walls - jobs divided among various trades in the past. Ganshert's business now extends to decks, patios and ponds. His father graduated from UW-Madison, where he studied landscape architecture, and then worked at the renowned White Elm Nursery, formerly in Hartland. Later he decided to strike out on his own, back when that was a simpler proposition. "I picked up an old pickup truck, a shovel, a rake and a hoe," said Pete Ganshert, now 83. "I eventually got a wheelbarrow." He started his business out of his Madison home, which had an old barn that he used as a garage. The garage had a dirt floor where he dug a trench between the two parking spots to keep his plants until they were used. Around 1960, Ganshert Nursery was moved to three acres off Seminole Highway. Pete married in 1953 and raised three children with his wife, Katie. Their oldest son, Dave, now works for a wholesale nursery in Florida. The middle child, Julie Selin, worked for her younger brother in the mid- to late 1980s as a secretary before starting another career. Later, Paul Ganshert got some help from two nieces and a nephew. One niece, Katie Selin, got a degree in landscape architecture from UW-Madison in December and is now looking for a job in the Portland, Ore., area. Paul Ganshert and his wife, Betsy, have two children: Natalie, 7, and Ian, 5. After Pete's wife died in 1991, he remarried. His new wife is Kathy. Paul Ganshert, 47, remembers being about 8 and earning a quarter for hoeing a row - a job that took him all day. Later he dug trenches in the nursery and was thrilled when he was allowed to go on jobs after turning 12 or 13. While Paul Ganshert attended UW-Madison, he worked for the Bruce Company, a landscape business in Middleton, and had a summer internship in Houston. He graduated with a degree in landscape architecture in 1980 and the two Gansherts ran tandem businesses with the same name out of the same location. Early on, Paul Ganshert did some side jobs at the Bruce Company, and the Gansherts also helped each other out. In 1986, Paul Ganshert moved his business to an old farm property on Lacy Road because he needed more room. He set up the office in the basement of the farm house until he could move it to one created on the second floor of the barn. Shortly after moving, Paul Ganshert began calling his business Ganshert Nursery and Landscapes. Pete Ganshert, meanwhile, had started tapering off his business. He retired in the late 1980s except for some trimming jobs. By the mid-1980s, Paul Ganshert had hired one employee and another seasonal worker. Now he has eight or nine year-round employees and 10 or so seasonal employees. He's learned a few things along the way. For example, in the past he did not charge for the landscape design - until enough people asked him to draw up a design and then didn't hire him. In his nursery, he started with a conventional, overhead sprinkling system, which wastes a lot of water and is unreliable. Eventually, he moved to a computerized and zoned drip irrigation system, gradually expanding its use and enclosing it with chicken wire to keep out the rabbits. His father taught him efficiency, and Paul Ganshert says he took those lessons seriously and has become "almost efficient to a fault." While his father kept to the old school and was still using only hand tools except for a Rototiller when he retired, mechanical equipment has become a much bigger part of the business. Pete Ganshert's hip replacement surgery scared his son into buying his first Bobcat, which eased the physical strain, and more equipment followed. If there is one thing he would have done differently it is to buy equipment sooner. At times, he has ended the season by asking employees what they considered the worst task. Then he would look to see if there was a piece of equipment to make the job easier while weighing the cost against the time and effort saved. Ganshert said that as the job market has changed, he has tried to come up with jobs like snow removal to give his employees work during the off season. It helps ensure retention and uses machinery that otherwise would sit all winter. But with fickle weather, snow removal isn't a sure bet, so recently he has had employees remodeling a home to be sold. "You just can't do what everybody else is doing," he said. pcotant@mailbag.com madison.com ©2009 Capital Newspapers. All rights reserved. |
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