NNLA Member Spotlight: Papio Valley Nursery
To promote our members and learn about each other, NNLA will begin highlighting members with a spotlight feature in the NNLA newsletter, Facebook page, and website. To participate, go to the NNLA webpage (nnla.org) and under member benefits you will find a button to click to complete a form. For this issue’s member spotlight, we visit with Alan Weiss of Papio Valley Nursery.
Alan Weiss, Papio Valley Nursery - www.papiovalley.com alan@papiovalley.com - 402-510-4418
Tell us about your business’ background and history. How did the company start and where it is today? Describe your path to get here.
Papio Valley Nursery (PVN) started in 1999 on a few acres of the Weiss/Grimm family farm. We were helped by our families, including grandparents, great aunts, parents, uncles and countless friends. Building greenhouses, planting, watering, delivering, ect all jobs necessary to get the business up and running! Perennials were the plant of choice in those early years as we propagated, planted and sold to just a few nurseries locally in Omaha. In 2004, we started working with landscapers and greatly expanded to carry all plants a landscaper would need, including trees. The business continued to grow in both space, greenhouses, customers and employees and mulch production. Today PVN sits on 25 acres with 20+ employees during the growing season. We are so thankful for our many blessings and great repeat customers and employees who get the job done! 2024 brings new excitement with a new distribution site location in Valley, Nebraska. PVN will continue with the same great customer service and quality materials that have earned us a great reputation over our 25 years.
What are you known for or what is your niche?
While we handle many different materials that a landscaper needs, our true niche has been customer service. Like many wholesale companies, we depend on a small group of landscape professionals to support our business. Consistent quality and service are the most important qualities that customers look for and our success points directly to our strengths in those areas. Our new expanded location in Valley will bring our level of service to landscapers in that part of Omaha. We are excited about the new spot and are prepared to deliver more of the same!
What are some highlights of serving your community?
Papio Valley Nursery has been very active over our 25 years donating to Catholic churches in Omaha in Northeastern Nebraska. Both I and Rita grew up in the Catholic Church and greatly value that community. We have met many new people in these communities with the landscaping projects we helped with, and the communities have all been very grateful for the beautification of their worship space. PVN also has donated plants to many boy scout projects that have been completed in parks and retirement centers across our city. Beyond that, PVN plants have been included in many major spaces across the city of Omaha including First National Bank, Henry Doorly Zoo, Mutual of Omaha, The College World Series and many others over our 25 years.
What awards or recognition has the business received?
Alan was awarded the Distinguished Nursery Professional award in 2010 by NNLA.
What are you passionate about professionally?
My professional passion revolves around growing and propagating beautiful plants. It’s always exciting to me when we can start with something very young from seed or cutting and turn that into a beautiful plant. We’ve grown everything from ornamental grasses to annual flowers to oak trees from acorns. Seeing a plant from start to finish grow and go out the door is so rewarding!
What is your favorite way to spend a weekend?
My favorite way to spend a weekend is fishing for smallmouth bass. I used to be a very competitive athlete before back surgeries became a permanent part of my life and finding and outsmarting the fish take me back to my competitive days. Sadly, we have to travel to South Dakota to find good fishing in this area. Most people don’t know that I recently started singing with a Christian mission group here in Omaha and I enjoy that very much! God has so blessed me and my family with everything we have and singing glory and praise music fills my soul with joy! Praise God!
Anything else you would like to tell people about yourself or the company?
There is no substitute for hard work in the landscaping industry and we have always believed that at PVN. Customer service is not always easy, but we have found it has made us successful and we will continue to be our driving force.