A spring rain drenched Wally Winters and his son as they loaded 22 large palms — Chinese fan, washingtonia and sago — onto the San Antonio contractor’s trailer.  Winters, who with his wife Lillian owns Adams Gardens Wholesale Nursery, admitted he didn’t usually run the forklift, but he had sent his crew home early because of the heavy rain.

Yet 35 years earlier, when he first purchased an abandoned nursery on 10 acres off Bass Boulevard west of Harlingen, Winters had been the crew. His initial goal had been to restore the 800-foot-long greenhouse spread over three acres to its previous glory and then sell the property, as he had sold many other fixer-uppers.  But Winters decided the outdoors work suited him, and he brought Adams Gardens Nursery back to life.

“We grew woody ornamentals like bougainvillea and hibiscus. That is what we thought was our business model.  We had palm trees because everybody else did, but we ignored them,” Winters recalled.  Although Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 damaged the palms of major nurseries, Adams Gardens’ palms survived.  Soon after, a buyer for a Dutch consortium showed up and bought all of Winters’ palms, which were mostly specimen or mature palms.

“That’s when we knew palms tree were for us,” Winters said. “We made more money that year than we ever had.”  He and his men spent the next 12 months loading two freight containers a week with palms of five varieties that were shipped from Houston to Tenerife in the Canary Islands.  The Canary Island date palms, used along the Mediterranean coast, were dying out and needed to be replaced.  In particular, Barcelona, preparing to host the 1992 Olympics, was desperate for replacement palms.

Meanwhile, Winters had begun planting 20 acres with 17,000 palms, which take about five to six years to reach sellable size.  The nursery phased out their woody ornamentals and were ready to sell washingtonia palms (fan palms) by 1992.  Within a few years, Adams Gardens was growing 18 palm varieties, ranging from Cocos plumosa, royal palms, fishtail, traveler’s palm and various fan palms to date palms and cycads, commonly known as sagos.  A new generation of Valley palm suppliers purchased his trees to start their operations.

To read more on this story by Eileen Mattei, click the “Current & Past Issues” tab and select July 2014, or pick up a copy of the July 2014 print edition of Valley Business Report.