With the purchase of Wise Nurseries' retail garden center in Statesboro, Brian Powell has expanded his landscaping company, Statesboro Southern Scapes Inc., to include a retail location, and also intends to make landscape design services a larger part of the business.
        As of Jan. 1, the Highway 80 East site, which includes a small store and irrigated outdoor growing spaces outfitted variously for sun-loving and shade-needing plants, became Southern Scapes Nursery. Powell bought the garden center from Wise Nurseries owner Matthew Wise, who had operated it since 2004. Wise Nurseries, in business since 1996, continues to operate as a wholesale nursery based in Pembroke.
        In fact, Wise Nurseries was the source of Southern Scapes' plant materials all along. Powell started his landscaping business in With the purchase of Wise Nurseries' retail garden center in Statesboro, Brian Powell has expanded his landscaping company, Statesboro Southern Scapes Inc., to include a retail location, and also intends to make landscape design services a larger part of the business.
        As of Jan. 1, the Highway 80 East site, which includes a small store and irrigated outdoor growing spaces outfitted variously for sun-loving and shade-needing plants, became Southern Scapes Nursery. Powell bought the garden center from Wise Nurseries owner Matthew Wise, who had operated it since 2004. Wise Nurseries, in business since 1996, continues to operate as a wholesale nursery based in Pembroke.
        In fact, Wise Nurseries was the source of Southern Scapes' plant materials all along. Powell started his landscaping business in 2004. After going to Andrew College in Cuthbert for an Associate Degree in business, he attended Georgia Southern University for a year, meanwhile starting his work as a landscape installer.
        "It just snowballed and took off," Powell said.

Range of services
        Before the purchase of the garden center, Statesboro Southern Scapes' range of services encompassed landscaping installation and maintenance, irrigation installation, lawn maintenance and pest management. Powell is keeping all of these, and the existing Southern Scapes office at 227 South Zetterower Ave. Up until now, the landscaping arm of the business did mostly high-end residential installations, for which the firm did design work in-house.
        "Our focus was to have the type of install customers who would want us to maintain that landscape and keep a long-term relationship," Powell said. "So that's kind of been the goal, and it's been a pretty successful method."
        With the addition of the garden center, he hopes to attract even more demand for that sort of turn-key landscaping. But the nursery will also accommodate customers who simply want to buy plants, as well as homeowners who want Southern Scapes to design their landscape and provide the material but then let the homeowner install it.
        "If a customer wants to do something on their own, we can offer designing services, and then we can actually go out and lay the pots out, the plant material out for that customer if they still want to do the install themselves, all the do-it-yourselfers," Powell said. "That's something that's really uncommon, at least in this community."

Designs by Renz
        Bill Renz, who was manager of the garden center for Wise and worked with that company about seven years, has come over to Southern Scapes in that capacity, but will now also go to customer locations for design work and consulting.
        "It gives them so much more freedom and options at different levels. ... I like to think of it as coaching," Renz said. "If they decide to take that option, we can coach them through the entire process, or offer just to go ahead and let us take care of it, turnkey."
        Interviewed the second week of January, Powell was keeping all of the employees of both Southern Scapes and the former Wise retail nursery.
        That included three people at the nursery this month, but January is the bottom of the down season for plants.
In the growing season, the nursery will employ about five people, while the landscaping business already employed seven to nine, he said. So, he expects to have a dozen or more people on payroll in his expanded business.
Pest control
        Powell's father, Tim Powell, who has a bachelor's degree in pest management and plant protection from the University of Georgia and more than 35 years of experience in the pesticide business, is the company's pest management expert. Eradicating lawn weeds is a big part of this branch of the business, which also includes control of insects and plant diseases.
        "By the spring we actually are going to be introducing mosquito control, so we're just kind of trying to cover all the bases," said Brian Powell.

Spring ahead
        In mid-January there was, as would be expected, plenty of vacant space on the nursery grounds. But Renz had just taken delivery of what he said is the largest camellia collection the facility has ever seen, more than 40 varieties. The president of the Georgia Camellia Association had met with him to help select these plants, Renz said.
        "There are a lot of rare cultivars that you're not going to find just anywhere," he said.
        As other kinds of plants arrive for spring planting, a transformation is promised.
        "You won't recognize this place in 30 days," Renz said.

              Herald reporter Al Hackle may be reached at (912) 489-9458.