Mickman Brothers offers full design/build landscaping services for residential and commercial customers.

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When John Mickman, along with his brother, Chris, founded Mickman Brothers as a Minnesota landscaping business in 1975, his primary goal was to create a more stable environment for his family than the one afforded by his job on a fishing boat in Kodiak, Alaska. It took a couple of years before he could leave the fishing business altogether, but the business began to really grow in 1977 when it expanded its focus to three areas – landscaping, landscape irrigation and Christmas wreath manufacturing.

Mickman’s father, an engineer, had built a part-time Christmas wreath business and sold his inventory to his sons when he retired. John Mickman focused on the irrigation side of the business while his brother ran the landscaping operations. The wreath business was a natural fit, he says. “My father ran his Christmas wreath business the whole time we were growing up,” Mickman says. “My brothers and I made wreaths and deliveries. When we bought his inventory, he was selling between 10,000 and 15,000 wreaths a year.”

From 1978 to 1987, the company operated out of Mickman’s house. In 1987, it purchased 21 acres of commercial property in Ham Lake, Minn., near Minneapolis/St. Paul. “We started making improvements to the buildings and adding new buildings,” he recalls. “We did landscaping and put plant material on the property and people started pulling over and wanting to buy our trees. At that point, we decided to start a garden center.”

Despite a shoe-string budget, the company secured financing for the new garden center and built it with some unique features. “We found an antique railroad caboose for sale for a couple thousand dollars and moved it to the property,” Mickman says. “We built decking and trellising around it and an existing farmhouse, which made the operation look much bigger. That set up worked well for five or six years.”

The company gradually added greenhouses to the property and established a formal expansion plan in 2000. “We had a strategic planning meeting in 1999 and challenged the group to look into the future and see what we wanted to become,” he says. “We decided we wanted to make a commitment to be the premier provider of green goods and services in our primary market area, the Twin Cities.”

The first order of business was to make a statement to the community with a new, expanded facility, he says. The company began a $2.5 million expansion that included a new garden center, greenhouse and a large warehouse with administrative offices on the second floor. “We kept the existing structures that were working well and ended up with 30,000 square feet of offices, warehouses and retail space,” he says. “The construction process started in 1999 and ended in 2000. The new, expanded garden center opened in spring 2001.”

Mickman says the expansion has served the company well and allowed more room for growth. He estimates 90 percent of the garden center, landscaping and irrigation business comes from the Twin Cities, with half from a five-mile radius of its location in Ham Lake, Minn.

Mickman Brothers offers full design/build landscaping services for residential and commercial customers, including water features, waterfalls and landscape lighting. Its irrigation services include automatic lawn sprinkler system design and installation for residential and commercial facilities, including athletic complexes, schools and universities. He says the next step is to add a landscape management division.

“We have our bases covered,” he says. “If it’s a really dry year, the irrigation business is strong. If it’s a wet, lush year, people are really in the mood for planting and garden center business is strong. This diverse model makes us one of the largest green industry companies in the state of Minnesota.

“None of our businesses individually are the biggest, but combined, they give us tremendous financial strength and resources, and an ability to innovate. My brother Chris and I are risk takers, but not blind risk takers. If an idea is worth executing, we do it.”

Mickman says he expects a 5 percent increase in sales this year, over last year’s $12 million.