Green Practices
There are a number of ways we practice sustainability at Drummers besides growing lots of plants.
- Recycle all cardboard, packing newspaper and most office paper.
- Work to purchase as many locally-produced goods as possible.
- Our waste is hauled by a local hauler and burned to generate power.
- The store’s cement walls conserve energy and reduce sound.
- Offer our customers plastic pot & tray recycling with help from LJP Waste & Recycling and the Minnesota Nursery and Landscape Association. This program has ended for 2009 due to overwhelming success.
- Offer our customers the opportunity to recycle vases & baskets.
- Use our basement as a cooler without using power to winter and to heel in bare root plants.
- Maintain green spaces with display gardens and the ravine in the shrub lot.
- The rock surface on our shrub lot is a permeable surface that reduces storm water runoff and heat.
- Retrofitted the retail store lighting in 2008 to high efficiency flourescent lighting that also saves on cooling costs.
- Reuse and recycle wood pallets.
- Use drip irrigation in our glass greenhouse to conserve water use.
- Use an energy curtain in our glass greenhouse to save and block heat depending on the season.
- Reuse storm water to water all of the plants in our shrub and tree lot and display gardens.
- Use energy-saving in-floor heat in the glass greenhouse.
- Our staff works with customers to correctly identify cultural issues so if a control is needed, it is used correctly.
- Offer a range of natural and organic products for weed and pest control as well as fertilization and have staff on hand who know how to use these products and sustainable practices.
- Offer seminars on natural and organic gardening best practices.
- Promote benefits of tree planting to the commercial and residential customer and the United Nations Billion Trees Campaign starting in 2007.
- Paired with the Bend of the River Million Trees Project starting in 2008.
- In our greenhouses and our property, we grow as many of our own plants as possible to save transportation and other costs and inputs.
- Our floral shop takes back vases and containers for reuse: Sometimes offering a rebate.