Erin Caird stands among hundreds of potted Hydrangea flowers at the Por La Mar Nursery in Goleta on Friday, March 27, 2020. (Kenneth Song/News-Press) At this point, it would probably take less time to name the industries that haven’t been negatively impacted by the outbreak of COVID-19 than those that have, and among the latter is Santa Barbara County’s flower and plant growers. As grocery stores and supermarkets find their shelves getting stripped bare of pasta, canned goods, frozen foods, cleaning supplies, and most popularly, toilet paper, some have chosen to prioritize their space for new shipments of those items over flowers and potted plants. This change has left wholesale flower and plant growers in Santa Barbara County without crucial pipelines for getting out its products, which consist of millions of plants grown annually. Erin Caird, director of sales and marketing at Santa Barbara-based Por La Mar Nursery, didn’t mince words about the precarious state in which wholesale growers have found themselves since certain stores stopped accepting shipments for a month. “This zero shipping has annihilated our industry,” she told the News-Press. Specializing in gladiolus flowers and various kinds of potted green plants, Por La Mar has been able to continue shipping its products to markets like Trader Joe’s, Gelson’s, Lazy Acres, and Vons. While Ms. Caird preferred not to state the names of those that have put a freeze on shipments, she did say that some of them are out of state. As a result of certain grocery stores not accepting Por La Mar’s plants and flowers, the nursery’s sales are far below normal, the past two weeks seeing sales impacted as much as 70%. Of course, if Por La Mar does not sell its products that are now ready for stores, it won’t be able to sell the same plants when this crisis abates. “Our products don’t sit on a bench and wait for a month. They’re growing and then they’re dying,” she said. It may not rise to the level of a silver lining, but Ms. Caird said Por La Mar could have been hit even […]
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