Business in BLOOM

Sunshine Growers’ Versatility Is Key to Its Record Poinsettia Crop

- TIM CRAIG

Walk into a Publix during the holiday season and you’ll pass a display of beautiful red and white poinsettias. If you look closer, you’ll see varieties that can’t be found anywhere else, including “Cinnamon,” with its whimsical pink and yellowish-orange tint, and “Marble,” with its light-colored leaves swirled with red.

These varieties and others — grown exclusively for Publix — come from Sunshine Growers, which has grown from a single nursery in Fort Meade to multiple locations around Central Florida over the past 33 years. It has done so by using technology that has helped maintain quality standards while cutting costs and impacts.

It’s not necessarily the technology that keeps this company thriving, it’s the ability to see market trends and adapt to the changing marketplace and the desire to remain focused on growth.

Sunshine Growers President Craig Roth says he has always enjoyed plants. It’s one of the reasons he started a lawn service in junior high and maintained through high school. In 1986, at the age of 19, Roth, together with his father Lee and brother Scott — along with friend Shane Weaver — bought a nursery in Fort Meade and formed Sunshine Growers. Roth knew from the start that buying a nursery and growing what’s inside were two different things.

“I had to learn from scratch,” he says. “Fortunately, I had people that helped along the way.”

One of the key helpers was the former owner of the nursery, who, for the next year, came down once a month from Tennessee to answer questions, provide on-site service and help.

“I also talked to other local growers who would provide insights,” says Roth, “and I hired some good growers.”