Long Island Reno: The Hicks Nurseries design process

This is the second in a three-part series on Hicks Nurseries' 2023 makeover, designed to embrace the future and renovate with relevance in mind.

After in-store customer research launched the renovation project, the Hicks Nurseries team moved into the design phase.

President Stephen Hicks compares it to a landscape design project: after the needs determination phase (overviewed in part one of this series), the design had to bring those needs, objectives and goals to life in a plan.

Historically, the Hicks family worked with world-renowned garden center designer Ernest Wertheim of Wertheim, Van Der Ploeg, and Klemeyer, unquestionably the world's premier IGC designer, who passed away at 100 years old in 2020. Wertheim's last Hicks project was in 2007.

"We were spoiled, to be honest, in that we worked with a design firm for 30 years that knew us, knew our business, knew the industry inside and out, understood all of the issues about operating a garden center, and now we were kind of starting from scratch," Hicks shares.

IGC idiosyncracies

Ohio-based experience design firm Chute Gerdeman won the project, helped along by a recommendation from Envirosell, the firm that did Hicks' research. While Chute Gerdeman had extensive retail expertise, this was its first IGC.

Hicks explains that having a firm from outside the industry, with a different perspective, willing to ask questions and shake things up, was a positive. However, that fresh perspective came with challenges.

"There was a learning curve on them coming up to speed on the garden center business that, to be honest, any firm coming in who'd never worked in our industry would have had," Hicks says. "And I think there were times when that added to the design process."

Hicks Director of Marketing Eleni Roselli notes, "Clear communication of goals is key when working with a design firm unfamiliar with the GC industry. It's important to invest time in educating them about the seasonal nature of our business as that impacts design. Regular check-ins and collaboration are a must."

© Photo courtesy of Hicks Nurseries

Translating the IGC experience

Many elements of the renovation were driven by a maintenance perspective. The 27-year-old greenhouse facility — top-of-the-line when built — was showing its age. The polycarbonate roof had passed its life expectancy. Similar issues faced the underfloor heating and shade curtain system.

Faced with these inevitable needs, the question became how Hicks could tackle maintenance issues, address unique IGC challenges, and elevate the customer shopping experience as well.

"There are unique challenges garden centers face in terms of moving volume in a short period. The perishability, the nature of the product, the fact we're in a greenhouse. That's another challenge in just the physical nature of the structure and the requirements for water drainage, light vents, shade systems," Hicks says.

The Chute Gerdeman team was able to translate their retail expertise to the garden center space.

"They were very good at helping us identify our fixtures, our layout, our signage, which were the main objectives that we'd set out," Hicks says.

Design takeaways

As with the project's research phase, Hicks says the design plan didn’t surprise him. Many major changes — flipping the entrance and exit to the store, expanding aisles, upgrading the checkout experience, and improving signage and sightlines — were ideas already percolating.

But Chute Gerdeman helped flesh those out and show what could be done. A lot of time was spent considering adjacent products and how things could be moved as well.

"The final result was probably not as radical as some of the first iterations that we looked at, which we kind of dug into it, and it became not practical," Hicks explains. "You start with a more extreme design, and you end up somewhere in the middle, or maybe closer to where you are, but further than you might have gone."

Hicks adds that front-end planning, both from design and construction perspectives, pays off — even though those dollars may be painful to spend. That means having some hard and challenging conversations rather than looking at your current design and just updating it.

"You may end up coming back close to where you were, but going through that exercise is valuable," Hicks adds.

The third and final part of this series, coming Nov. 14, will dive into the implementation of Hicks Nurseries' redesign and will feature several photos of the redesigned IGC.