Community Highlights: Meet Laurie Risner of Perfection Landscape and Greenhouse, LLC

Today we’d like to introduce you to Laurie Risner.

Hi Laurie, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My mom, Nancy Kochel, and my sister, Amber Holmer, and I worked in the green industry many years before deciding to take on a major effort of starting our own greenhouse business in 2010, named Perfection Landscape and Greenhouse, LLC. That first year, our family built our first two greenhouses on my grandparents’ property, where my grandpa had his woodworking business, Aichholz Woodcrafts, for decades before passing away in 2005. It was special for all of us to put life back into his buildings with business again.

At first, I ran a landscape crew that offered landscape installation and maintenance services, while Nancy and Amber grew annuals, mums, and poinsettias at the greenhouse. We started out mostly a retail store, but year-after-year we continued to grow and add more greenhouses to accommodate more wholesale customers and community fundraisers.
In 2018, we took another leap of faith and became the production grower of the “Mulberry Miniature” program, which is the nation’s largest collection of miniature plants for small container gardens such as: fairy gardens, terrariums, and etc. These plants are sold wholesale to various businesses throughout the country. That was a challenging year as we added four more greenhouses, a shipping building, and dug a pond for additional water source to begin production. We then made a hard decision to discontinue the landscape services to focus on this new program, which was a good decision as this program quickly became a better fit for our company.
Today, our small family business has grown to 12 heated greenhouses and 2 cold frames with five employees and various family members helping us out throughout the year. Each year, my Dad says he’s done building greenhouses, and we always talk him into building just one more. But this time, I think he’s serious!
In the coming year, we do have a few areas of surprise we are working on to improve the customer shopping experience for our local customers.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Like majority of small business owners, we struggle with balancing work and home life. With live plants, it’s even more of a challenge since we need to water and manage temperature control daily. Our business has become a 24/7 job and we have many sleepless nights when a storm kicks up at night in the summer, or if a heater goes out in the winter. We struggle with our entire family getting fully together at holidays, weddings, or funerals. Family vacations have become a thing of the past, as we have to plan ahead to take our vacations separately. Even-though it’s hard to sneak away, we found it’s important to give yourself a mental break. I have found hiking and backpacking trips to stay off-grid have become a huge stress relief and mental reset!

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Perfection Landscape and Greenhouse, LLC?
We pride ourselves in our quality plants, being creative and different from everyone else, and giving back to our local communities. We are all addicts to our jobs, as we really enjoy what we do, and genuinely want our customers to be successful. We are most proud of the fact that we grew this business from the ground-up by the hard-working hands of our entire family and incredible employees.

In the spring, we offer: annual flowers, fruits, vegetables, shrubs and perennials, custom and ready-made planters, miniature plants, handmade crafts and cemetery items. In the fall, we grow mums, pumpkins, gourds, fall annuals and planters. At Christmas we offer handmade woodcrafts, live trees, wreaths, poinsettias, grave blankets, and more.

Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
Everything happens for a reason. Today’s set back can be tomorrow’s blessing in disguise.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://perfectionlg.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/perfectionlg/