Triple Tree Nursery

There are miles and miles of new subdivisions encircling Maple Ridge as the Vancouver metro area continues to grow. All this new growth surrounds and sustains Triple Tree Nurseryland, a family business started in 1962.

For almost 48 years the Van der Pauw family, now Tom and his sons Rylan and Daton, have helped amateur and professional gardeners beautify homes, offices, and commercial and apartment buildings.  

Spread over three acres, the nursery is almost equally divided between outdoor displays; undercover, retail and greenhouse displays; and parking. This mid-sized operation employs 16-20 people, depending on the season, and generates nearly $4 million in sales.

It was on a trip to a garden center trade show in February 2009 where the Van der Pauw’s discovered a new twist to merchandising plants: houses! Not real houses, but reduced-scale, realistically imaged façades.

Tom and his sons hit the ground running after the show to locate someone who would help them put their ideas into action. “We found PacBlue Printing and it was amazing!” said Rylan, “We got home near the end of February and before the end of March our three façades were installed and ready for shoppers. They really came through for us!”  

Nurseries and garden centers in the Lower Mainland operate year round because of moderate climate, but March, April, and May are their biggest sales months. With only a few weeks to get the project designed, printed, fabricated, and installed, a cool March gave Triple Tree and PacBlue a little extra time to get displays finished and ready for the 2009 peak season without tying up precious sales space. 

PacBlue Printing has long been known for its ability to present beautiful visuals for condominium presentation centers; to “show them the view before it exists.” By combining scaled down images of homes resembling those in nearby developments, PacBlue allowed Triple Tree to show homeowners what new plantings would look like without waiting. The images were printed direct to substrate, on PacBlue's high quality flatbed printers.

Placing young plants in front of a 2/3-scale façade gives the proper sense of size, closer to that of mature plantings surrounding a full-sized home.

Arranged at the back of the outdoor area, the house fronts draw shoppers quickly through the nursery. “People do a double take. Kids run up and knock on the doors. It is great how people get excited about the houses and plantings,” noted Rylan. “If we have a plant or grouping that isn’t moving, we put them next to the houses and they sell immediately.”

Sales have been so strong that Triple Tree recovered the cost of the project in just a few months and is looking to expand the concept. What’s next? A backyard, a pool… maybe an apartment building? The sky’s the limit; imagine it and PacBlue Printing will find a way to print it and install it!

Want to see more images of this exciting project, check out the complete Triple Tree Nursery Photo Gallery.