Canada: Greenhouse owners eagerly tap markets

Many women receive flowers for their birthday. Nadine Stielow got a greenhouse. Stielow’s husband, Bob, just happened to meet a member of the Thiel family, who mentioned that their family’s 52-year-old greenhouse business was for sale.

Between Nadine’s love of gardening and Bob’s entrepreneurial and business skills, the couple had the right combination of naïveté and moxie. In 2010, the couple bought Thiel’s Greenhouse, a business at the end of a dead end road in the small town of Bruderheim.

“Bob ran a business all his life. I had a partner and a mentor I could trust to keep the business aspect. I knew I didn’t have to learn that all at once,” Nadine said during a busy spring weekday.

This winter, five years after buying the business, Nadine received the Alberta Greenhouse Growers Association Grower of the Year award for her innovation and enthusiasm for expanding the greenhouse into a consumer destination. “I didn’t receive the award because I know everything about greenhouses and growing. I got it for my tenacity and ability to run the facility,” said Nadine, who remembers coming to Thiel’s as a child with her mother and grandmother.

Click here to read the complete article at www.producer.com.