Over the past 100 years, Sheridan Nurseries has grown into one of Canada’s leading landscape architecture firms.
Operating on more than 1,200 acres of growing space in Southern Ontario, the company now produces 600 varieties of perennials to go along with 600 nursery stock varieties.
For the past few years, it has also offered something else: cutting-edge innovation.
Environment is everything when it comes to growing plants and shrubs, particularly in the widely varying climates in which Sheridan has to operate. So the company went on the hunt for a system that uses wireless probes to monitor variables such as soil moisture, acidity and temperature.
“It’s the old 80/20 rule,” says Pieter Joubert, Sheridan’s vice-president of nursery operations, based in Georgetown, Ont. “Eighty per cent of your problems come from 20 per cent of your crops.”