The perfect pair

Even though they grew up worlds apart, Mark and Jolly Krautmann’s shared passion for the outdoors would draw them into a lifelong personal and professional partnership.

“We’ve made a great pair,” says Mark, co-owner of Heritage Seedlings and Liners, a wholesale propagator of rare and unusual grafts, seedlings and cutting-grown woody plants based in Salem, Oregon. “Working together, Jolly and I were like Paul [McCartney] and John [Lennon], Butch and Sundance, Yin-and-Yang, to use an Asian analogy. We’re just a really great complementary pair when it comes to our business skills and our personality types. And we’re both workaholics to a fault.”

Mark describes himself as a Midwestern farm boy growing up in Chillicothe, Missouri. His grandfather, Eugene Poirot, a South Missouri farmer and an agriculturist of note that was sensitive to land conservation issues, greatly influenced Mark’s views on environmental stewardship.

“Rachel Carson and Silent Spring influenced his generation and the emphasis on stewardship and the early movement to preserve large tracts of land,” Marks says of his grandfather. “He became quite a well-known conservationist and speaker in the Midwest. And he went to Washington, D.C. to testify on conservation measures like terracing steeply sloped fields, and a lot of stuff that became a part of modern agriculture.” To date, the Krautmanns have restored more than 300 acres of oak, prairie and wetland habitat on their farms.

Half a world away, Jolly’s parents fled their home in China for Taiwan in 1949 following the Communist takeover of the mainland. She spent her youth enjoying the outdoors and developed a fascination with agriculture, which led her to study soil sciences at Texas A&M University in 1975. It was at the university where Mark and Jolly would meet.

“I met Mark in the first ten days at Texas A&M,” Jolly says of the couple’s whirlwind romance. “At the time, being in the U.S. and at the university was still so shocking for me and a little bit confusing. After I met Mark, though, everything just settled down. For me, it was really amazing to have a boyfriend and be studying in a foreign country.”

Mark and Jolly married in 1976, graduated the following year and then moved to Oregon so Mark could pursue a job at a seed company in the Willamette Valley, the heart of the state’s wine country. The Krautmanns fell in love with the picturesque region.

“I told Jolly, I don’t care if I have to wash dishes. We’re moving here, and that’s that,” he says.

The seed company job lasted about a year until that company closed for financial reasons. Mark moved on to a job at a nursery in Portland, where he commuted for the next three and a half years. At the same time, Jolly had found a good job as a grower on a local mushroom farm.

After being released from his second job, Mark was confident he’d learned enough about the nursery business to strike out independently.

“I figured, if it fails, what’s the worst that could happen? I’d be out of a job, which is where I started,” he says of the fledgling Heritage Seedlings. “But the business took off like a rocket.”

Meanwhile, Jolly quit her mushroom job when she became pregnant with the couple’s first child, Jonathan. She used that time off to learn computer programming at the local community college.

“That was when micro-computing first got popular in the early 1980s,” Mark says. “Jolly just rode the crest of that wave and became a very capable systems analyst.”

At the time, Heritage Seedlings was growing quickly, and Mark says it became evident that he needed assistance managing the business’s administrative side. So, Jolly decided to write a software program to manage many of these functions, allowing him to remain focused on the company’s field operations, where he really wanted to immerse himself. Mark seemed to have a sixth sense regarding the field aspect and production side of Heritage Seedlings’ operation.

“Unlike me, Jolly had the [administrative] vision when it came to the team,” he says. “So, she wrote a whole software package for our nursery at a time when there wasn’t anything but the most rudimentary software programs to help nurseries with payroll, inventory and such. We used that program for the next 20 years.”

The path less traveled

The Krautmanns were building something extraordinary with Heritage Seedlings. The company’s business would double in size over and over during the ensuing years while maintaining the same strategy Mark and Jolly established at its start, anticipating customer trends and being solid predictors of what their clients would want to purchase years down the line.

“We’ve never grown the company on the strength of what people wanted today. We’ve always looked ahead and looked around the next curve and recognized what varieties people would want 10 years later,” Mark says, citing their early offering of more native plants and rare deciduous landscape trees requiring less maintenance. “This has always been our key strength.”

Despite what naysayers were saying, the Krautmanns jumped on the idea of growing unusual ornamental deciduous trees and shrubs for their clients. “People — my peers, at the time — said no one would ever buy this oddball stuff,” Mark says. “So, we chose the path less traveled, as Robert Frost put it. And it made all the difference.”

Today, Mark and Jolly continue to follow this same business philosophy and offer many of the same plants they introduced over 40 years ago, and they’ve added far more cultivated varieties. But while many could attribute nearly a half-century of success to the Krautmann’s business savvy and dedication, Mark and Jolly are the first to recognize that Heritage Seedling’s continued prosperity is firmly rooted in its employees and within the company’s unique culture.

“I like to joke that over the years, I’ve propagated more people than I have plants,” Mark says.

Fred Beshears has known the Krautmanns for nearly 30 years. And in addition to their commitment as environmental stewards and contributions to the nursery industry, Beshears, the owner of Simpson Nurseries in Monticello, Florida, marvels at the business they’ve grown and the loyalty and professionalism of its staff.

“They’ve brought a lot of unique plants to market, which has, without a doubt, been an asset to this industry on a national level,” Beshears says. “But the impact Mark and Jolly have on their employees amazes me the most. They teach their employees everything they know about this industry, and they really treat their people right. As a result, they always treat the customers right.

“Without a doubt, they’re subscribers to The Golden Rule — treat others as you’d want to be treated,” he adds. “And you see that [philosophy] in their team every time you deal with them.”

The core management philosophy at Heritage Seedlings is accountability, where everyone is responsible for their positive and negative actions.

“Our employees own their successes and their failures,” Mark says. “We treat people with a level of respect that is a wide-open range to explore their talents and to discuss opportunities for improvement in complete transparency. There’s no second-guessing or games being played here. When you see that, you must treat it like a sucker on a grafted plant — you chop it off. Otherwise, the longer you wait, the harder and harder it gets to remove.”

And like that initial plant offering that remains among their primary crops today, Heritage Seedlings’ culture has grown from a strong tradition of mentoring.

“I have a favorite expression, and it’s ‘Help me understand …,’” he says. “And whether it’s something positive or something that’s bothering me, I ask the same question because the first word is ‘help.’ That immediately puts me in a position of need and places me on a lower level, in terms of hierarchy or authority, with the person I’m talking to.

“People get intimidated talking to an owner, which can be daunting for many people,” he adds. “Owners sometimes get more respect than they’ve earned. It’s always my goal to earn more respect than I was given differentially.”

So, it’s not unusual to find Mark in a greenhouse helping line workers pot plants or prune while casually striking up a conversation with his workers. “You place yourself in a vulnerable position, which dignifies their role in a way that words cannot,” he says.

Another cornerstone of Heritage Seedlings’ culture is personal achievement and success. New employees are placed in positions matching their talents and interests to ensure success. “To match people in positions they’re interested in and have the God-given talents for ensures their success with us,” Mark says. “And it involves a lot less babysitting and scrutiny.”

And the Krautmanns foster a working environment built on open communication and transparency. “We have ‘extreme’ open communication, and I use the word ‘extreme’ very carefully,” Mark says.

“We take [communication] to the extreme because we tell people just to blurt out what they’re thinking. You’d be surprised how many people find that really uncomfortable because they’re not accustomed to that [level of openness in the workplace].” However, it’s a trait that not only alleviates layers of bureaucracy and breaks down barriers within the workplace, but these newfound skills transfer from their professional lives to strengthen their personal relationships, as well.”

Finally, Heritage Seedlings subscribes to a no-nicknames policy.

“We never compromise on the issue of mutual respect,” Mark says. “We tell people that we call each other by the names that their mommas gave them. Nicknames invariably devolve into something that someone may begin to feel some resentment about. And when you’re dealing with different [ethnic] cultures, there may be sensitivity to the little nuances in [a nickname’s] meaning.”

Leadership

Regarding their leadership styles, Mark and Jolly look no further than their respective families for their inspiration.

For Mark, his family was sensitive to the human condition. For example, his father, Edmund, a veterinarian in rural Missouri, catered to impoverished farmers who were desperately struggling to survive. “I have clear memories of my father getting calls in the middle of the night to go out to some sump holler, knowing that poor farmer had no way of paying him,” he recalls. “The farmer would say, ‘I wish I could pay … it’s going to be a spell … maybe even a few years.’ My father would just say, ‘Oh, George, let’s not worry about this.’ And then the wife would come out with a gooseberry pie [for my dad].”

His mother, Joan, a botanist and a “complete plant maniac,” volunteered with the local arts council and successfully petitioned the governor’s office for funds to bring in world-class musicians from New York, Philadelphia and Chicago to perform locally and expand residents’ exposure to culture and the arts.

Half a world away, Jolly was similarly influenced by her parents. Her father was an Army colonel who routinely took care of the needs of hundreds of people under his command, and her mother was a school teacher for 30 years, responsible for guiding and developing impressionable minds.

“They both had a really big influence on me,” she says. “I remember they provided me with everything I ever needed for [my education] and indulged me in all of the things I was fascinated about. And out of all of the things they gave me, I’d say their wisdom most influenced me.”

Together, Mark and Jolly have focused their passions on a long history of industry and community service. The pair have been heavily involved in the Oregon Association of Nurseries (OAN), representing over 600 individual nursery stock producers, retailers, landscapers and related companies serving the nursery and greenhouse industry. Mark served as the trade organization’s president in 2003 and 2004.

The Krautmanns have been very active in a variety of plant and conservation societies, in particular the International Oak Society, where they are generous financial backers in its efforts to preserve endangered and threatened oaks.

Their involvement extends to local charities, as well. The Krautmanns were active with the local parochial schools and school boards when their children — Jonathan and Joan Claire — were growing up. In addition, Mark and Jolly have been very active in their support of children’s advocacy groups.

“This industry, this Earth, has helped us make a good living, and we just want to give back and spread that success around,” Mark says of the pair’s industry and community work.

While they remain involved with Heritage Seedlings, Mark and Jolly have stepped back a bit from the day-to-day operations to enjoy their lives together. When they’re not traveling, visiting their children in Arizona and Puerto Rico, or hiking throughout the nearby scenic Columbia River Gorge, they can be found relaxing at home, barbequing in the backyard, and listening to classic rock and the blues.

But the business and their love for plants and the outdoors are never too far out of reach for this dynamic duo.

“We just visited Japan and Korea last December,” Mark adds. “We were there to sightsee — they’re just beautiful countries to take in — but also to check out some new crops, too. And to visit friends we’ve made there over the last 20 years, which is amazing when you think about it.

“Jolly and I have been so blessed with our careers and our lives together,” he says. “I can’t imagine [taking this journey] with anyone else.” 