A Look Back at 2025
Every year has a story to tell. As 2025 draws to a close, it’s only natural to reflect on the ups and downs of the past season with others in our industry. Most often, these conversations revolve around sales. Did we see growth, and by how much? How did sales projections hold up to reality? When all was said and done, what was our bottom line? Of course, these are all necessary metrics when it comes to measuring the success of a business. And, by all accounts, most of our customers, vendors, and competitors reported that 2025 was a great year. Demand was strong, sales were up, and we’re looking forward to maintaining this momentum as we head into a new year.
But days are long and years are short, and sales numbers only tell half the story when it comes to a year like 2025. In Chapter One, we battled extreme winds and bitterly cold temperatures with little to no snow cover. At the nursery, we suffered some losses of new varieties of perennials that, it turns out, aren’t truly hardy. It was a bad year for winter damage in the landscape as well, which, to our landscape contractor customers, meant one thing: replacements.
The Second Chapter of 2025 came quietly, with spring temperatures that were much closer to “normal” compared to the previous season. On average, our crops were at least four weeks behind where they were in 2024. But, despite chilly temperatures and a delayed start, spring sales were strong. Drive to a local garden center on a Saturday, Sunday, or even a Monday morning in May, and you would find the parking lot full of cars. We were fortunate to find labor to fill our roster early and we remained fully staffed for the rest of the season.
Historically, Chapter Three begins just after Memorial Day weekend. This year, those pages were blurry. June sales were so strong that it felt like spring had begun again. We didn’t know it then, but it would be August before we experienced our first slow week. This was at once incredible and exhausting, pushing many of us and our labor force close to our limits, both mentally and physically, while also allowing us to crush our sales projections in a way that I don’t think any of us expected.
Chapter Four was a tumultuous one. Bizarrely warm temperatures lasted well into October, ensuring what should have been a strong finish to a season that ultimately ended somewhat abruptly for many in the Chicago region by the presence of ICE. In Garden Prairie, we kept our gates closed for two weeks while we waited with uncertainty and wondered what this would mean for the following spring.
And now we find ourselves in the epilogue of 2025. This is the section that’s meant to tie up loose ends and draw perspective from all the chapters that came before it. Officially, we we’ll look back at historical sales data as a record of success for each of our previous years. But we will all remember the stories behind the numbers, because it’s those struggles and accomplishments that have made us who we are today. So we want to say thank you to every one of you who has been part of our story over the years. We’re looking forward to seeing you all next year, when we’ll continue to write the next chapters of this book together.
