Daily Press from Newport News, Virginia • Page 89

DttiluP Irm BUSINESS Sunday, June 25, 2000 F5 Burpee plants seeds in retail Internet businesses: tJ i- Hi itlrt il TiH.l iceberg lettuce, the Big Boy tomafb, the Fordhook lima bean, the first yellow sweet corn and others. Later, the company introduced or popularized marigolds, zinnias, nasturtiums, hybrid impatiens and other staples of the flower garden. Many of these varieties were developed at Fordhook Farm, the suburban Philadelphia plot where Atlee Burpee conducted his seed trials beginning in the 1880s. Located on more than 60 bucolic acres, Fordhook once boasted the largest trial grounds in the United States. Ball a member of the Chicago-based Ball Seed family that bought Burpee in 1991 acquired Fordhook from Atlee Burpee's descendants in 1999.

It's now being extensively renovated and eventually will become what company officials call a "horticultural mecca" for the gardening crowd. Seed trials resumed on a limited basis last summer. This year, the number of plant species being tested at Fordhook is nearly tripling to 5,000, with 100,000 plants taking up 15 acres. Trials manager Sharon Kaszan calls the plants grown at Fordhook a "living Burpee catalog." Meanwhile, the original seed-house is being turned into a museum. An old stone barn that once held horses and cows eventually will house a conference center for the horticulture industry.

And the Burpee family residence now a bed-and-breakfast is getting a face lift "The re-establishment of Fordhook is a very symbolic and important development" Clark said. Another important development Burpee's Web site, which was revamped in April and expanded to include products not available in the catalog or stores. Internet sales represent a fraction of Burpee's total business, but it "has been a huge challenge to us to meet the needs of the Internet generation," Ball said. The task, Ball and Clark say, is to keep Burpee innovating while remaining true to Atlee Burpee's motto: "Burpee Seeds Grow." "We really are trustees for what Atlee Burpee started. We're working for something a little bit larger than quarterly results," Clark said.

"And in the final analysis, that's "Gardening mainstay branches out The Associated Press WARMINSTER, Pa. Connie Natal once had a huge vegetable garden with broccoli, tuce, zucchini, Brussels sprouts and even a tomato that weighed almost 3 pounds. The demands of motherhood she has twin 15-year-old boys put a stop to that. Now her gardening is limited to flowers, and she buys live I plants instead of seeds. "If you start from seed, you have to start them inside and really nurse them along," Natal, 47, said recently as she left a suburban Philadelphia garden center.

"I don't have time for that" The Atlee Burpee Co. is tak-j ing note of gardeners like Natal. Long regarded as the "800-pound gorilla" of U.S. seed companies, Burpee has diversified into live plants and even retail stores. And it's revamped its 5-year-old Internet site, in a further effort to aid time-starved customers.

Tom Cooper, editor of Horticulture magazine, likes the strategy. "Burpee may be old-line, but I don't think there's anything sleepy about them," he said. Nationwide, the number of households buying live plants has increased dramatically over the last five years, while the number buying seeds has remained about the same, according to the National Gardening Association. Lack of time, patience and experience are the most commonly cited reasons, as well as the booming economy that has people willing to spend extra for instant blooms. Seed companies have been deal-' ing with the problem since the 1980s, when home vegetable gardens began shrinking in size, former Burpee employee Steve Frowine said.

He's now horticulture director at a Connecticut-based nursery At the same time, garden centers and the garden departments of larger chain stores began offering a bet-. ter selection of bedding plants. "The variety and quantity of small plants is way up over the last couple of years. It just shot up, and the customers are there," said Mark Kane, executive garden editor of Better Homes Gardens magazine. Burpee which will celebrate its 125th anniversary next year concedes that more and more people are choosing plants over seeds.

It's trying to adjust to that reality In recent years, the suburban Philadelphia company began selling 187 new and unusual varieties of annuals and vegetables as plants species that you won't find at the typical garden center. "It's what people want, but they didn't have time to grow them" from seed, said Dave Devine, director of product MMIUfhn develop-. mi i i ment. In April W. Atlee and May, Burpee Burpee opened the www.burpee.

first retail com stores in its 124-year his- National tory, and Gardening Burpee Association: plants have www.garden. been flying org out of them. The first Burpee Gardens superstore opened in the Chicago suburb of Downers Grove, 111., in April. Two other stores followed in Medford, N.J., and Horsham, Pa. The stores allow Burpee to get immediate customer feedback in a way that the company's bread-and-butter the venerable Burpee catalog can't They also give Burpee another way to leverage its name.

Although the stores are doing big business people have traveled as long as an hour and a half to get to the one in Horsham company executives worry about angering the 15,000 retail outlets that sell the Burpee seed line. So they've promised to open additional stores only to get a good geographic dispersion. "If these stores are gushers, are we going to open up a new chain? That's not our objective at all," George Ball Jr. said. He's Burpee's president chief executive officer and a third-generation seed man.

Meanwhile, Burpee has started discussions about selling its plants at other retail stores. The Burpee Gardens stores are a trial run for that. "We don't see a time when the i'Umum if. jp'f 7 asm 4 -v 1 seed business will go away, nor do we see a time when the catalog business goes away," said Bill Clark, an assistant to Ball. "We do see that plants are becoming a much larger part of Burpee's future." 1IQJNG I to AP photos Fordhook Farm in Doylestown, Pa.

where Burpee Co. founder W. Atlee Burpee conducted his famous seed trials beginning in the 1 880s is being extensively renovated. Top: Workers at Fordhook Farm prepare a plot that will be used to plant and test seeds. Left: Amy Stock, a 19-year-old intern, checks new plants in one of the farm's greenhouses.

Burpee familiar with the then-still-novel theories of geneticist Gre-gor Mendel developed his own experimental breeding program and produced many varieties that today's gardener takes for granted: (Of 5. ii- life i I i -A Change is nothing new for Burpee. The company has a long history of innovation dating to 1876, when W. Atlee Burpee started the business with $1,000 in "seed money" from his mother. 9 km iiil) wm what makes the company so suc cessful.

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