Visser Greenhouses gets more grounded with TrueGrid.

Large-scale wholesale grower gets a little
greener with permeable paving.

“TrueGrid was really easy to install. It was no problem for our in-house staff to do in just a couple of hours. Definitely better than it was before.”
- Jay Visser, Visser Greenhouses Owner

Challenge

The largest greenhouse grower in the state of Montana, Visser Greenhouses maintains 50 greenhouse structures. Family owned since 1972 with 4 generations actively working in the operation, their business has adapted to the changing demands of the commercial nursery and landscape market for over a half-century.

Visser ships over 1.5 million plants in a 10-week period each Spring. Customers that include local nurseries to national chains like Ace Hardware, Costco, and Murdochs Ranch and Home Supply count on them to reliably deliver the highest quality plants on time.

Their business runs smoothly due to continual improvements in operational efficiency. With hundreds of staff working on moving lines, there’s no room for hiccups in the process.

So when wheeled inventory carts create ruts and get caught on the weed mat flooring, the extra effort it takes to move plant inventory wastes valuable time and cuts into profits.

Solution

A simple improvement can go a long way. While other greenhouses pay high dollars to install concrete or graded gravel flooring, relatively inexpensive weedmat has served Visser well for decades. They weren’t looking to make a big capital investment in an entirely new greenhouse floor. Instead, they opted to focus on the cart access aisles between the plant inventory.

TrueGrid PRO LITE permeable pavers were installed down a 72 foot linear path to provide stability for wheeled carts. Since TrueGrid is ADA compliant, it’s proven to stand up to the intensity of those heavy rolling carts.

Rather than spend money on new aggregate, they excavated the native ground material to a 1-inch depth, leveled and compacted the base, snapped together the TrueGrid, staked around the edges, then reused that native material to fill in the TrueGrid cells. The TrueGrid path was covered with weed mat for consistency with the rest of the greenhouse floor.

Result

Gearing up for their busy production cycle, the operation has adopted one more refinement to make mass production run just that much smoother.

TrueGrid was a simple, durable solution to add stability and solve an annoying problem. With its permeable characteristics, it integrated easily to encourage natural moisture filtration back into the ground beneath the greenhouse. Plus it’s intended to last decades. And given it’s made with 100% recycled materials, TrueGrid made the greenhouse just a little greener.

Visser Greenhouses is considering expansion into multiple greenhouses, once they live with TrueGrid for this production season.

TrueGrid is the world’s strongest permeable paver. Used in grass and gravel paving, it’s strong enough to park a crane on, stand up to Montana’s tough climate and snow plowing, and still last for decades. And it improves Agriculture operations for farms and ranches across the state.

Contact Montana Hardscape Hub here to learn if TrueGrid can solve you commercial , farm & ranch or residential paving problem.