After more than five years of losses and declining sales at Heronswood, Ball decided to move the mail-order business to the East Coast, where it would be easier to ship plants to customers and where the company could more easily focus on the Heronswood plants that could survive outside the Pacific Northwest.
It will take all summer to move thousands of plants from Washington state to Burpee properties in Selbyville, Del.; Willow Hill, Pa.; and Doylestown, Ball said. Burpee's headquarters are in Warminster.
Hinkley said in an e-mail last week that a fair number of the plants could survive in the East. "Yet thriving in the East is another matter. . . . They simply cannot grow in the humid summer climates east of the Mississippi."
Even so, several horticulture experts said the Philadelphia region - a gardening hotbed because of its climate and Quaker roots - had been a good market for Heronswood. Most doubt the brand can retain its magic absent Hinkley's involvement.
Ball's move comes at a tough time in the do-it-yourself horticulture industry. Lawn and garden retail sales have declined for three straight years, to $35.21 billion last year, down 11 percent from the peak of $39.64 billion in 2002, according to the National Gardening Association in Vermont.
"Everyone assumed that as the baby boomers aged, they would become more active gardeners," said Bruce Butterfield, the association's research director. "They planted their gardens, and they are taking care of them," he said, "but they aren't building new gardens."
Butterfield also said that big-box stores, such as the Home Depot and Lowe's, have taken about 45 percent of the market. "All the other channels have gotten squeezed," he said.
