How to Price Plants for Sale, With a Calculator

To price plants, cost a crop from the plug or seed to the day it sells: the pots, the potting mix, fertilizer and tags, the water and heat, the time to pot it up and tend it for weeks, and the plants that don't make it. Divide by the plants you actually sell, then price for the margin you want after card fees. Price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fees). In the example below, a tray of 288 perennial plugs becomes 264 saleable gallon plants at $2.79 each. At a 55% margin after 3% fees, the floor is $7; garden centers sell gallon perennials for about $13, which leaves $9.82, and landscapers paying $7.50 leave $4.48. Below is a crop's cost, the losses, the price, landscapers, plants that don't sell, and a free calculator.

The short version

• Cost a whole crop: plugs or seed, pots, potting mix, fertilizer, tags, water and heat.
• Count the time: potting up, then weeks of watering, spacing and weeding.
• Divide by the plants you sell, not the plugs you bought; losses are part of the cost.
• Floor = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − card fees); retail sits at what garden centers charge.
• Landscapers buy by the flat or the dozen at a little over half retail.
• A plant that doesn't sell this season costs more every week it waits.
• TaroStack counts every crop from plug to sale, with the losses recorded. More below.

What a crop costs

Bayou Bloom Nursery, a made-up plant nursery in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, I use in these examples, grows coneflowers from a tray of 288 plugs into 1-gallon pots:

Potting up takes about a minute a plant, and eight weeks of watering, spacing and weeding take about an hour a week: 768 minutes in all, $256 at $20 an hour.

The losses

Twenty-four of the 288 don't make it: a few plugs fail, some get disease, some never fill the pot. So the crop's cost is spread over 264 plants, not 288, which adds about 9% to every one.

How a nursery keeps count of what's growing and what's ready is in nursery inventory spreadsheet.

The price

Plants are priced by size and kind more than by cost: shoppers know what a gallon perennial costs at a garden center, and a rare or blooming plant sells for more. The floor tells you where a discount stops paying. How a whole nursery adds up is in plant nursery business plan.

Landscapers and flats

Landscapers buy dozens of the same plant and expect a price a little over half retail. At $7.50 a gallon, a coneflower leaves $4.48, and a landscaper who takes 60 at once saves a dozen Saturdays of selling them one at a time. Price by the flat for annuals and vegetable starts, and set a minimum for the landscaper price. How to set wholesale terms is in how to price handmade items for wholesale.

Plants that don't sell

A plant that misses its season keeps costing: water, space and time, and it gets root-bound and leggy. A gallon perennial held over the summer at $0.15 a week of care costs over $4 by autumn. Sell it at a discount in late summer, bump it up to a bigger pot and price it as a bigger plant, or count it as a loss. Keep track of what's been on the benches longest, the way obsolete inventory examples describes for any slow stock.

Get the calculator

Download the plant pricing calculator. Type a crop's plugs, pots, mix, fertilizer and tags, the water and heat, the plants you expect to sell, the minutes of potting and tending, overhead, your hourly rate, card fees, the margin you want, a landscaper price and a retail price to test; it works out the full cost of a plant, the floor rounded up to a dollar, and what each price leaves. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.

Where this stops working

A nursery has dozens of crops at different stages, plugs arriving every few weeks, plants moving from the greenhouse to the sales yard, and losses that happen a few at a time. A calculator prices one crop; it doesn't follow 50 of them through a season.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack counts every crop from plug to sale, with the losses recorded.

Each crop a batch. Potting up a tray is a batch that takes the plugs, pots and mix off stock and gives the crop a lot with its date, and the plants that came out good and those that failed are recorded, so each crop's real cost shows.

Losses with a reason. Plants lost later leave stock as adjustments with a reason, so shrink is a number by crop.

Benches as sites. The greenhouse and the sales yard can be sites of their own, so plants moved out to sell are a transfer, counted on a phone; more than one site is on Standard.

Batches, lots and adjustments are on every plan, from $49 a month; more than one site is on Standard at $99. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.

Questions people also ask

How much should I sell plants for?

Above your floor and near what garden centers charge for the same size. In the example, a gallon perennial costs $2.79 to grow, the floor is $7, and it sells for $13.

How do you price perennials?

Cost the crop from plug to sale, spread it over the plants that sell, then compare the floor with the local retail price for that pot size.

How do you price potted plants for landscapers?

At a little over half retail, with a minimum order. In the example, $7.50 a gallon leaves $4.48 a plant.

How do you price plants that didn't sell?

Count what they've cost since: a summer of care adds about $2 to a gallon perennial. Discount, pot up and price as a bigger plant, or write them off.