Josh Robinson of Robinson Nursery.

McMINNVILLE, Ore. — Step into the office at Robinson Nursery and instead of being greeted by the familiar earthy smell of mulch and fertilizer, like you might expect from a wholesale nursery, colorful sticky notes, charts, and an organized array of posters line the walls.

Josh Robinson, co-owner and sales manager of the nursery, has made it his mission to change the way people think about the nursery industry. Which is fitting, as Josh is also the current president of the Oregon Association of Nurseries.

“Trying to get people to see our perspective and what it’s actually like running a nursery as opposed to what people will think it is … that’s the number one challenge,” said Josh. He has served on the OAN board ever since he started working at the nursery full-time.

“It’s been a long but very fun and fulfilling ride,” he said.

Robinson Nursery was started by Rick and Roxanne Robinson, Josh’s parents, in the 1980s. Josh is the sales manager, and his brother, Chris, is the general manager.

They are excited to be “carrying the torch” as the next generation of nursery growers, Josh said.

Rick and Roxanne started the nursery by growing bare root trees. But a decade ago, Robinson Nursery transitioned to growing their trees in pots.

“The reason we started doing that is because there’s a lot of cool trees we wanted to grow. But when you lift a tree out of the ground, it obviously has some impact on the health of it,” said Josh.

Making this significant shift in terms of growing technique was not without its challenges.

Josh attributes a huge part of the nursery’s success to the combined feedback, innovative thinking, and teamwork from everyone at Robinson Nursery. A huge part of the nursery’s success after making this significant shift in growing technique was due to the feedback Josh and his family received from their employees.

“What makes us unique is that I think anybody in any position at this company feels empowered to give input about improving a process that we’re doing,” said Josh. “We have the frontline workers making significant improvements on a process we’ve done for years, I think there’s something incredibly special to that. So it’s the people and their ability to make decisions and have it impact how we do a process in the future.”

One of these improvements for the nursery was coming up with an alternative potting system. Shortly after transitioning to potted trees, the team realized that the trees were getting “choked out” in solid wall pots. So instead of going back to raising bare root trees, Robinson Nursery came up with an alternative solution: air-root pruning containers and Grow Ready Liners. These containers allowed the nursery trees to have a more fibrous root system, while the liners allowed the trees to produce more consistently.

Last year, Robinson Nursery worked with The Peters Company, run by Elizabeth and Rick Peters, and received strategic coaching on how to improve their business strategies for continuous improvement.

For Josh, working with the Peters was a game-changer. “Working with the Peters has been a watershed moment for us.”

Another pivotal moment for Robinson Nursery was integrating an internship program for high schoolers to work at the nursery during the summer. “When I did it with my buddies, they would work for money and then get out,” said Josh, referring to his experience working on the nursery in the summer as a high schooler.

In the last few years, Robinson Nursery has formalized the program. “Well, now we’re seeing some of these high schoolers transition into full-time work after school, because they see it as a viable career, which I think is amazing. And it kind of kicks the trend of the talk about issues facing our business. … Nursery work is a viable career path. It’s not just a minimum wage job that people are always in and out of, the turnover rate is virtually zero.”