Lessons from Florida:

Last year, this newsletter asked whether California should develop state-specific tree quality standards or a tree quality certification program. That article shared perspectives from California growers and sparked discussion about potential benefits and challenges.

As the conversation continues, California may benefit from examining the evolution of Florida's Grades and Standards program. Florida has maintained nursery grades and standards since the 1950s, but those standards have been substantially modernized since the 1990s. The current document is available here. It includes guidance on general processes like verifying standards and handling disputes. It also devotes separate sections (and associated committees) to standards for trees, palms, shrubs, and wetland plants. The tree section includes steps for determining tree grade (highest to lowest quality: Florida Fancy, Florida #1, Florida #2, Cull) and associated examples which call out easy to measure qualities like trunk caliper, tree height, and crown diameter relative to container volume, but also more complex expectations for shoot and root structure.

Three individuals who helped to drive this modernization were available to talk with us about the lessons which have guided Florida’s success. John Conroy is President and Founder of Fish Branch Tree Farm and has led many revisions of Florida's Grades and Standards for palms; he was joined by his daughter, Lori Lowers, Vice President of Fish Branch Tree Farm. Dr. Ed Gilman served as an Environmental Horticulture Professor at the University of Florida for many years, and his research and extension work guides many modern tree quality standards, including those in development for California. Michael Marshall studied under Gilman before returning to Marshall Tree Farm as Vice President and joining the Florida's Grades and Standards committee for trees. 

Lesson 1: Collaboration Guided by Science Builds Credibility (Gradually)

If you get buy-in from the broader community that there is a need for this... gosh, you're halfway there. John Conroy

Florida’s tree quality document originated in 1955 with the Florida legislature, but the industry has always been the responsible party for deciding how it wants to assign value to its products.

When Conroy joined Florida’s tree quality grades and standards conversation as a relatively new grower in the mid-1990s, he was interested in revising the Florida tree standards away from subjective processes focused on aesthetic qualities and towards quantifiable measures of tree “health and the eventual potential for successful reestablishment in the landscape.” That is just what has happened, but it didn’t happen without input from across the industry, and it didn’t happen all at once. 

Growers, researchers, landscape architects, contractors, inspectors, regulators, and extension professionals all participate to this day in the ongoing revision (every five years) of Florida's standards. 

That broad representation matters because it creates confidence that the process serves the whole industry, including its professionals and the public, avoiding the perception that standards “are promoted by any segment that has a special interest,” notes Conroy. "If you get buy-in from the broader community that there is a need for this," Conroy said, "gosh, you're halfway there." 

Additionally, Conroy shares, when people “have to talk to each other, and look…eyeball to eyeball, [they] realize that there’s a person with an opinion that has some value…it’s not a sterile process anymore.” Having all parts of the industry in the same room has helped work out the practical details efficiently. For example, committees were able to recognize early on that standards and specifications serve different purposes. Conroy explained that standards define acceptable plant quality, while project specifications address the particular needs or aesthetic preferences of individual projects. Keeping those two functions separate allowed the standards to use science by people like Gilman as a common language for decision making while giving landscape architects and other clients the flexibility to specify characteristics appropriate for a given site.

Another feature of Florida’s process which helped to build support was that several years passed between the publication of revised standards and full implementation, giving nurseries time to adjust production. Marshall recalled that many well-intentioned growers wanted to "improve the quality [and] improve the professionalism" of the industry and were willing to "create a better product," but without a gradual roll-out, they may have been stuck with inventories started under different expectations.

Lesson 2: Education Changes the Industry

"The only way to really convince anybody of anything is to learn it yourself and then let them come and see it."Dr. Ed Gilman

Publishing standards was just the beginning, and both Marshall and Conroy recalled considerable early skepticism among the broader production nursery community. 

Marshall noted that some growers questioned whether new pruning and production practices were possible, while others believed trees naturally developed acceptable structure and shouldn’t be interfered with. "Obviously, when you're growing trees a certain way, it takes a long time to change how you're growing them. You can't just say, 'Okay, overnight we're going to have a new standard.’ So, there was resistance for that reason. There was also this idea that nature grows a better tree…there were people that put on meetings just to say ‘science doesn’t know better…nature knows better.’” Marshall’s response to this contingent: “yeah, but nature grows trees in forests, not in the middle of cities and open pastures.”

There was also some clear anxiety from growers about how things would play out. Conroy recalled, “I'm not gonna name names, but one of the leaders in this process, his dad said, ‘What are we gonna do? We're gonna have tree cops going out, and arresting trees and people for not meeting the grades?’ And so it's kind of, you know, a perception of intrusion, and a violation of a free-market approach and people resist it from that standpoint, and you're probably dealing with an…independent thinking group of people…Growers tend to be that way, right? They're by God, gonna do it their way.” 

Many worries proved to be unfounded, as the Florida grades and standards program has ultimately landed successfully, and all three interviewees assign a big part of this success to Florida’s investment in education. Research and extension professionals like Gilman, nursery associations, the Florida Chapter of the International Society of Arboriculture, and experienced growers like Conroy and Marshall have all helped to organize workshops and demonstrations showing how structural pruning and root management affect long-term tree performance.

Gilman views extension as the bridge between science and practice. Research identifies production methods which improve performance, but demonstrations and education persuade growers to adopt these methods. As Gilman explained, "The only way to really convince anybody of anything is to learn it yourself and then let them come and see it." Once growers see the differences in root systems, branch structure, and associated tree performance firsthand, change happens remarkably quickly. Asked how long demonstrations usually take to convince people, Gilman smiled: "About two seconds."

Practical field tools have also helped. An association of Florida nursery people focused on tree quality research and education called Roots Plus Growers developed laminated tree-grading cue cards that condense dozens of pages into shorter field references, available here. Simplified, Marshall acknowledged, but enough to "boil it down to the main components" and "get you close.”

Today, the work is less about overcoming the original debate than maintaining knowledge as new people enter the industry. Education is "almost like upkeep," in Marshall's words. It also reduces inconsistent interpretation: even objective criteria require judgment, and much of the training is meant "to minimize the subjectivity." Inspectors may expect trees to look as though they came from a "cookie-cutter" production line, but, as Marshall put it, "we grow these in the field; we don't actually assemble them." 

Lesson 3: Standards Need Institutional Support

A technical document cannot implement itself. Florida's standards have an established home within the state's agricultural system. They are published and enforced through the Division of Plant Industry, part of the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Conroy described Florida as fortunate to have sustained state investment in agriculture and state-level staff not dependent on individual local governments. "The state puts a lot of money into the agricultural side of things," he said. "We are fortunate in that regard."

That said, Florida's standards are voluntary; state inspectors don't certify every tree as a Fancy or a Florida #1. Instead, municipalities, landscape architects, and other purchasers frequently reference the standards in ordinances, contracts, and specifications. 

"To be in business, you don't have to grow according to the grades and standards," Marshall explained, but because they're so widely used, they've become "almost mandatory if you want to be a player on most jobs."

To give an example of how government backing gives the grades and standards practical force, Conroy and Lowers recalled a case where a landscape architect intended to reject a tree the nursery believed met the grade; just mentioning potential involvement by Division of Plant Industry inspectors resolved the issue. "It is nice to have that behind us," Conroy said.

Conroy elaborates on how grades and standards with institutional backing benefit growers. “In the final analysis, most of us want to know what’s in it for us. And if I’m gonna be playing by the rules…and doing things properly, and others aren’t having to play by the same set of rules, then I’m disadvantaged… If your state government isn’t saying ‘This is something we want to have done, because we think it benefits our constituency,’ then I think that weakens the process dramatically…You’re always gonna get the people who are vested and are gonna play by the rules because they want to grow good stuff, and then you’re gonna have the others who are just doing the minimum and sending out substandard material that has a [low] chance of reestablishing…and then they get the contracts again and again…they’re low bidding because they’re not putting any money into their material.”

California lacks a comparable institutional structure. That absence doesn't prevent California from developing standards, it just means that successful implementation may rely on early assignment of responsibilities, likely shared across the industry, for maintaining the standards, coordinating revisions, providing training, and resolving disputes. 

In Summary: It’s Time for California Growers to Join the Conversation

We can’t import Florida’s tree quality program unchanged, but we can use its lessons as a roadmap to guide similar efforts in California. Successful standards in Florida were built collaboratively over time and are grounded in measurable science which distinguishes plant quality from project preferences. Success has also required sustained education and institutional support for implementation. The details are now left in the hands of California’s own industry experts, and that includes its nursery professionals!

If you would like to participate in California’s tree quality conversation, but haven’t known where to start, please visit the “Growing Gold” section of the Urban Forest Institute to peruse the current state of guidance documents outlining tree production priorities for urban forestry consumers. Brian Kempf, an active member of the Growing Gold team, will also be presenting at the California Nursery Conference in October. Finally, always, you are invited to identify your local UC Nursery and Floriculture Alliance Cooperative Extension Advisor and reach out for more information.