Community Highlights: Meet Michael & Jennifer Hagerty of Country Gardens Greenhouse

Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael & Jennifer Hagerty.

Michael & Jennifer, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I spent 35 years in a white-collar business mostly revolving around corporate finance. I worked in several different industries, including investment banking and entertainment.

For almost a decade before purchasing Country Gardens, I was one of the founding partners of a market research agency. My specialty was in using behavioral science, complex statistical models, and virtual reality to help big consumer goods manufacturers forecast their businesses. One day, I woke up and realized, I got no joy from making my clients richer, and I needed to get my hands dirty. I googled “businesses for sale in Nashville” and looked at about a thousand things before I ran across Country Gardens Greenhouse.

I knew absolutely nothing about running a greenhouse but was intrigued by the notion that something I could create with my hands could bring joy to my customers. I met with the owners of the business and I was hooked. We worked for a few months to put a deal together and closed around the first of the new year 2023.

I told Jennifer that I was only going to do this if she was my partner in the business. I’m good at some things, and bad at others. And all the stuff I’m bad at, she excels in. I can dream up a whole page of ideas, and she is the force that reduces those ideas down to an actual work plan that makes things happen. We’re good together.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
This has been by far the most difficult season of our lives together.

Filling a pot with soil, planting a baby plant in it, watering it, and making sure its environment is ideal is not too difficult with just a few plants. Managing that process for well over a hundred thousand plants in hundreds of varieties, dozens of pot sizes and shapes, many different environmental requirements, and making sure they mature at just the right times throughout a selling season that only lasts two and a half months, is a herculean effort.

We made a lot of mistakes–missed cues and clues along the way. But we learned from each one of those misses and, thankfully, they weren’t big enough to jeopardize the business. We’ll be better, more accurate, and more efficient next year and in the years after.

We’ve been impressed with Country Gardens Greenhouse TN Inc., but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Country Gardens Greenhouse has been in existence for almost 15 years. Tim and Treva Yoder founded the business and owned it until we purchased it in early 2023.

Country Gardens have historically had two specialties: annuals and vegetable plants. On the ornamental side, our flowers are stunning. Geraniums, begonias, petunias, calibrachoa, verbena, impatiens, lantana. Vines, creepers, climbers, bushes. So many varieties and they’re all beautiful in their way. And we make stunning hanging baskets. We also sell ferns: Boston, macho, Kimberly Queen, Asparagus, and others. On the vegetable side, we germinate and grow over 30 varieties of tomato plants, and we seed a few dozen vegetable plant varieties.

We do not use chemical pesticides, nor do we grow any genetically modified vegetable plants. We use rainwater on all our plants that we catch in an aerated pond on the premises. We only use biological and organic means of pest control. Our plants are safe for our customers and our customers’ pets.

Moving forward, we are transforming the business from a spring-season business to a year-round operation. We will continue to grow and sell mums in the fall, and we’ll add a Christmas season offering in November and December. We’re also going to begin growing our ferns and perennials–plants we’ve historically purchased from other nurseries.

The quality and beauty of our plants are what has always set Country Gardens Greenhouse apart from our competitors. We will never allow our quality to slip. Quality is the reason people drive to our nursery from two and three hours away, past our competitors, and continue to come back year after year.

Networking and finding a mentor can have a positive impact on one’s life and career. Any advice?
Find someone who has succeeded at what you’re trying to accomplish and ask them every question that comes into your mind. And listen to the answers. In our case, that was easy.

The couple who sold us the business agreed to stay with us for the first year to mentor, coach, and consult with us. They speak the truth, sometimes the hard truth, because they want us to succeed. If we do succeed in the long term it will be in no small part because of the Yoders and their mentorship.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://countrygardenstn.com
• Instagram: @countrygardenstn
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/countrygardenstn