Thad Bashear – Simpson Nurseries

Before sunrise during the busiest stretch of the year, the loading yard at Simpson Nurseries is already humming. Trucks back up to rows of container trees one after another, and by the time most of Florida is pouring its first cup of coffee, ten to twenty of them are already rolling out for the day. It is a scene that repeats itself from January through July, and it traces back to a simple habit Thad Bashear picked up long before he ever ran the place: plan today for a tree nobody will need for years.

Thad Bashear | Simpson Nurseries | Owner and President

Bashear is the second-generation owner and president of Simpson Nurseries, a fruit, flower, shade and ornamental tree grower that has spent more than a century turning seeds, cuttings and grafts into landscapes across the country. The company operates from Florida and Tennessee, growing everything from young liners to mature specimen trees under a model employees describe as seed to sale, and it supplies both large national retailers and individual customers who order a single tree for their backyard.

a business built on seed to sale

Simpson Nurseries began generations ago as a small operation raising pecans, watermelons and seed crops, and it has spent the decades since evolving into a full-scale nursery with roughly 150 to 200 employees across its two locations. The company grows trees from the earliest stages of propagation, when staff members bud and graft young plants by hand, all the way through years of cultivation until a tree is large enough to leave the property. That patience separates Simpson from operations built around a single, mass-produced product.

The company supplies major retailers including Lowe’s, Walmart, Home Depot and Costco, and it also drop-ships directly from its Florida and Tennessee locations to individual customers who never see the inside of a store. A blueberry plant ordered online, for example, travels straight from the nursery to the buyer’s door rather than through a retail shelf. That dual identity, wholesale supplier and direct-to-consumer shipper, has become one of the clearest expressions of Bashear’s approach to running the business.

The company has also leaned into sustainability as part of its identity, drawing on a water reuse program that channels the city’s reclaimed water into irrigation for its fields. For an operation that uses millions of gallons of water a day to keep its inventory healthy, the program has earned Simpson recognition as an agricultural innovator, and it reflects the same long view that shapes nearly every other decision at the company, from labor planning to product mix.

steady hands through changing seasons

Bashear bought out his father, Fred, in July of 2023, becoming sole owner of a company his family has guided for two generations. He opened the Tennessee location in 2013 and, the year before that, launched Plant Me Green, an online arm of the business that now ships nationwide and operates its own distribution center in Tennessee alongside the Florida headquarters.

A longtime member of the Simpson team, who has worked alongside Bashear for more than a decade, says his role inside the company has shifted even as his influence has stayed constant.

“In my 13 years, his role has definitely changed, he’s not as much hands-on every day with the day-to-day detail decisions,” she says.

Nursery manager Chuck Golden now oversees the foremen who run daily field operations, while other longtime staff manage the office side of the business, filtering routine questions away from Bashear so he can focus on higher-level decisions. Even so, she says very little moves through Simpson Nurseries without his input.

“The details are still flown through him, he still makes decisions, he signs checks, it’s not like he’s completely removed from any of that,” she adds.

planning three years ahead

Ask anyone who works closely with Bashear what sets Simpson apart, and the answer tends to circle back to forecasting. Staff describe sitting down after each busy season to study month-over-month sales, track which products moved well in which markets, and project demand three to four years into the future, long before a given tree is ready to ship.

That mindset has shaped some of the company’s biggest recent moves, including its accelerating push into e-commerce. Plant Me Green now supplies inventory for the same major retailers Simpson has long served on store shelves, giving the online business a head start most competitors in the nursery industry never get.

“Having our foot in the door with the foot traffic allowed us to be able to grow with that online company,” she says.

Because search traffic can spike unpredictably, the company has learned to manage its own growth carefully, listing inventory in a way that keeps quality and fulfillment in step with demand rather than overwhelming its crews with more orders than they can fill in a single weekend.

investing in people

Forecasting product is only part of the equation. Simpson Nurseries has also had to plan around its labor force, particularly during a stretch of trucking, planting and shipping that runs nearly every week from January to July. The company has relied on an H-2A housing program for legal seasonal workers at its Tennessee location for several years and is now extending the program to Florida, where it is preparing to house roughly twenty-five workers this season.

Colleagues credit Bashear with recognizing workforce challenges well before they arrive and building solutions around them, whether that means expanding the H-2A program or simply keeping experienced staff in place for years at a time. Many employees, including some who have known him since they were teenagers working alongside him in the field, describe a business that treats its people as a long-term investment rather than a rotating cast.

“I would rather have really good, hard-working individuals here and by my side throughout this crazy busy season,” she says.

That same instinct for steady, deliberate growth extends to how Bashear thinks about the company’s future. Rather than chasing every trend that surfaces on social media or in a given housing cycle, Simpson Nurseries tries to anticipate which plants, programs and markets will matter years down the road, then quietly builds toward them. It is an approach that mirrors the trees the company grows: unhurried, deeply rooted and built to last well beyond a single season.

More than a century after Simpson Nurseries got its start with a handful of seed crops, the company Bashear now leads still measures success the same way it always has, one tree, one customer and one season of planning at a time. Along the way, the company’s own description of itself has evolved too, shifting from an old slogan about growing clean air machines to a simpler, more current line staff repeat often: over a hundred years and still growing.

With Plant Me Green expanding, the H-2A program taking root in Florida, and a staff that has stayed with him for decades, Bashear’s next chapter looks a lot like the last: patient, forward-looking and, as employees like to say, always with a lot growing on. For a business built on trees that take years to mature, that kind of steady, unglamorous consistency may be the truest measure of leadership Simpson Nurseries has.