A haven of inspiration

When Josh and Terra Richards bought a Fort Worth, Texas, tree farm in 2011, they weren’t your typical nursery or garden center owners. Fort Worth-area natives with deep roots, their previous business was a marina. Their driving goal was staying in their community to serve the people there.

After contemplating business options from movie theaters to rental properties, they settled on a tree farm with a few greenhouses and some landscaping overflow. Twelve years later, that tree farm and the area around it look vastly different — and “typical” still doesn’t fit these purpose-driven Top 100 IGC owners.

Josh and Terra’s success is a testament to the power of leveraging what you know and what you don’t. “We got into the industry not knowing anything at all about it,” she shares. “A lot of times when you get into an industry, you feel like you have to do it like everybody else to be successful.” But that’s not what they did.

Instead, they put their heads down and went to work creating something uniquely their own around a mission to “Inspire, Educate and Serve.”

Now, Fossil Creek is #morethanatreefarm and more than a destination IGC. Surrounded by apartments and commerce in a rapidly growing area, the thriving business is a getaway frequented by devoted customers and visitors enamored by what they’ve heard.

“In the middle of town, they can pull through our gates, and they’re on this super serene, relaxing 8 ½ acres. It’s like going to the park,” Terra says. People come to Fossil Creek and cross a bridge, literally and figuratively, pausing to watch waterfalls and koi while they soak in the peace.

At the heart of all — beating with carefully curated products and messaging — is The Haven, Fossil Creek’s nature-inspired garden lifestyle store.

‘Just trust me’

Fossil Creek Tree Farm began as Josh’s dream. While he and his team tended trees, Terra tended the books and marketing. Then she started doing some planting at home. “The more time I spent gardening on my own, the more I fell in love with it,” she says. Before long, the seeds for today’s Fossil Creek and The Haven were germinating.

Josh says the business far exceeds original expectations. “It’s much bigger, much more multifaceted than I thought,” he says. “My background is in business and operations. I’m good at making sure things flow. I am not a marketer. I’m not a brander. That’s when Terra got her hands on this.”

One of the first things Terra clarified was that they weren’t trying to sell to everybody. Josh remembers, “It was like, ‘This is the way we’re going to do it. We’re going to have this look, this feel, these textures, these smells.’ It was true branding.” It took time to develop, but very loyal clientele shop at Fossil Creek because they know what to expect.

He laughs at how “weird and unnecessary” Terra’s ideas first seemed. But she zeroed in on gardening demographics and her instincts on what women like and said, “Just trust me.” Then he watched as customers streamed in, shopping exactly like Terra said.

“She finally fought enough battles where I just have to trust her because she’s our customer. She knows her brand. She knows her marketing,” Josh says. “There are so many things we do that I never would have dreamed of. … You could have left me to my own devices for a long time, and these are not things I would have come up with.”

Though he can’t put an exact value on it, he knows everything enhances the overall experience and bottom line. He hears customers comment about the calm and happiness that come with crossing the bridge. “I can’t even point to all the things that make this overarching peace about it here,” he says.

No red flowers, please

Terra’s unique perspective drives Fossil Creek’s marketing and branding, including product selections that ensure The Haven lives up to its name.

“One of the things we do that I don’t think a lot of garden centers do is we curate product. … We have curated a certain style of gardening, so we draw a certain customer that likes that look,” she explains.

She compares shopping at The Gap to shopping at Anthropologie: “That’s two different styles of clothing. Our gardening is the same way. We curate certain colors and certain styles, even down to our plants.” When she told a new buyer that they don’t sell red flowers, he responded, “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.” But her marketing and branding choices aren’t based on whims.

She studied tickets and carts. She also studied the emotions triggered by colors and smells. “A lot of the colors we pick are because I want to create emotions for people. We do it in our own home, and we do it in our business. We’re just inspiring people to do it in their homes,” she explains. “Red doesn’t evoke any emotion of feeling relaxed in the garden.”

This season, blues are big at Fossil Creek. “I think all of us, as a country, we need stability right now. We need relaxation. So, we’re doing a lot of blues and greens to really ground people right now,” Terra says. “There may be a season that we’re feeling wild, and we do red.” But that day hasn’t come yet.

In curating products, she looks for items like candles with containers worthy of a second purpose once the candle’s gone and future heirlooms people might pass down. Above all, everything must reinforce the feeling of peace and inspiration at The Haven’s core.

“There’s a lot of underlying positive messages throughout our store. If we’re picking out towels with sayings on them, they have to be positive things,” Terra explains. “Even if I think the snarky things are funny, I don’t want them in the store. Because anything and everything that anyone touches or reads, I want them to leave feeling better than when they came.”

Inspire, educate…

About six years into the business, Josh and Terra revisited their intent. They sat together and wrote a purpose statement, asking questions like: Why are we even in business? They circled back to their original idea. “We wanted to inspire, educate and serve customers,” Terra shares.

Around the same time, they took a road trip to the Great Smoky Mountains. A billboard advertising a Top 100 IGC — a new concept to them — spurred an unplanned stop. Josh recalls coming away thinking, “We’re at least this good.”

Soon after, a copy of Garden Center magazine went up on Terra’s vision board. They didn’t make the Top 100 that year, but the magazine stayed put. And, even with just one location, Fossil Creek Tree Farm and Nursery has stayed a Top 100 IGC every year since.

While Fossil Creek and The Haven are both inspiring destinations, The Haven’s tendrils reach everywhere.

Terra compares shopping row after row of plants to shopping rack after rack of clothes: Many people don’t know what to do with what they see. So, the team creates vignettes to inspire people with ideas they can recreate at home. Mini destinations include a rose garden and special havens for people passionate about houseplants or vegetables, to name a few.

With education as a focus, Fossil Creek’s garden coaches are Texas Nursery & Landscape Association-certified. The IGC increased classes for customers, too. “We thought the more that we inspired them and the more we educated our customers, they would be successful at home and then realize how fun gardening is and how great it is for the soul,” Terra says.

True to the business’ roots, trees make up Fossil Creek’s top sales category. Houseplants, a leading category since 2018, have leveled off since pandemic peaks but are still going strong.

But The Haven tops the list for growth. “Our most consistent, fastest grower is still The Haven, just with the curation Terra’s doing with the different products,” Josh says. “Most of them still center around either gardening or gathering your family together. … It’s become a lot of people’s go-to place for gifts.”

… and serve

Josh and Terra credit their team, including many long-term employees, with helping people experience the special atmosphere they’ve created at Fossil Creek. “We have a really great team of people that work with us — a lot of people that have servant hearts for sure and then just a lot of creative people that are passionate about gardening. … It’s definitely a team,” Terra says.

They frequently tell their employees that as long as shoppers leave feeling better than when they came, the team did their job — even if that shopper didn’t buy a thing. That may sound like fluff, but it’s not, Josh says: “We have a different mindset. The sales come with taking care of the people. Take care of the people, curate the right things, and the sales follow after that.”

Terra adds, “Everything that we do, we know that we’re called to serve people. We’re not a not-for-profit organization. We are in the business of making a living. But at the heart of it, it’s just us wanting to serve our community.”

When it comes to sharing trade secrets, the pair is an open book. Some say they should worry about people stealing ideas. “That doesn’t bother me at all,” Josh says. “I know what we do, and I know how we do it. If you don’t have the right heart and the right mindset, you can try to duplicate it, and you won’t be successful. The only people that are going to be able to duplicate anything that we do are the people that truly want to serve people and help people — and I would love everybody to start doing it that way.”

Jolene Hansen is a freelance writer specializing in the horticulture and CEA industries. Reach her at jolene@jolenehansen.com.