Marion James and Kristy Packett: Better, Not Bigger: The Family Behind Poplar Ridge Nursery
It is hard to imagine that the more than 20 greenhouses now stretching across Poplar Ridge Nursery began with just one greenhouse, two customers, and a young couple willing to spend their evenings planting while their baby daughter sat nearby in her carrier.
“It was a very humble beginning,” the Packetts both said.
Those humble beginnings have grown into a thriving wholesale nursery in Montross that sends ornamental and native grasses, sedges, and other plant material to growers and landscapers throughout the East Coast and beyond. But ask Kristy and her husband, Marion James, what they are most proud of, and the answer has less to do with how much their business has grown and more to do with what they have been able to build around it — a life centered on family.
Both 1994 graduates of Virginia Tech, Kristy and Marion James knew one another through the university’s relatively small agricultural community, but their relationship began later. Kristy earned a degree in agricultural economics, while Marion James studied horticulture and later earned his master’s degree.
For Marion James, an interest in horticulture had taken root years earlier. His father kept a large garden, his grandfather had been a farmer, and a local Extension agent encouraged him to consider horticulture as a career. Summers spent working at Red Oak Nurseries while attending Virginia Tech gave him valuable hands-on experience and confirmed that production (growing plants rather than sitting behind a desk) was where he wanted to be.
After college, both found jobs in the nursery industry. Marion James worked in production at Ingleside Plantation Nurseries, while Kristy worked in sales and customer service, first at Historyland Nursery and later at Ingleside.
But by 2000, they were ready to try something of their own.
On family land in Montross, they erected their first greenhouse with help from both sides of their family. Marion James’s grandmother gave them $10,000, and his parents gave them another $10,000 — money that helped bring electricity to the property and purchase a generator.
Their families supplied plenty of sweat equity, too.
“We would spend Saturdays planting,” Kristy remembered. “Marion’s mother and grandmother would make us lunches. My parents would show up, and we’d plant all day long and break for lunch.”
Their first year, Poplar Ridge Nursery had two customers and approximately $18,000 in sales. Both Kristy and Marion James were still working their regular jobs, tending to their fledgling business during evenings and weekends.
By then, they were also parents.
“When Emma was a baby, we’d put her in her carrier, and we’d work in the evenings,” Kristy said. “She would just hang out in the carrier in the greenhouse, and she’d be happy because the dog would be running around her. That’s how we started with everything.”
The business grew steadily, with nearly everything they made going right back into it.
“We reinvested 90 percent of everything that was made just to keep growing,” Marion James said.
By 2005, sales had grown enough that Marion James felt it was time to leave his full-time job and devote himself to Poplar Ridge. For Kristy, whose parents had always received dependable paychecks as a teacher and an engineer, giving up that security was a much harder leap.
“I was petrified,” she admitted.
But the leap paid off.
There were challenges along the way — major snowstorms, equipment failures, hurricanes, and the 2008-09 recession, when sales dropped by more than 30 percent. Through each one, the Packetts adjusted, worked harder, and kept going.
Since that recession, they say sales have increased every year.
Today, Poplar Ridge specializes primarily in ornamental and native grasses and sedges, a niche Marion James recognized early in his career. The plants were popular but often difficult for nurseries to source, and their labor-intensive production made them a good fit for the hands-on operation he envisioned.
Their customers include wholesale growers who purchase young plants to grow into larger finished products, as well as landscape contractors using Poplar Ridge plants in projects throughout the region. Their plants have found their way into projects at places such as VCU, the University of Richmond, Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens, and even the Lego manufacturing facility near Richmond.
Yet for all the growth, Kristy and Marion James have deliberately kept Poplar Ridge a close-knit operation.
Customers know who will answer the phone. Relationships matter. And unlike larger operations built around expansive sales teams, much of Poplar Ridge’s growth has come through reputation and repeat business.
“I think they value the small, close-knit business versus a big corporate business,” Kristy said. “When they call, they are always talking to the same people.”
The same philosophy has shaped the Packetts’ family life.
While Marion James spends his days at the nursery overseeing production, Kristy handles the financial and administrative side of the business from their home office. It is an arrangement that not only plays to each of their strengths, but also has given Kristy the flexibility to be present while they have raised their three daughters.
“I’ve been very blessed to say that,” she said. “Most people cannot say they have that opportunity.”
Being home meant she could be there when the girls returned from school, handle doctor’s appointments and illnesses, and get them where they needed to be. Owning a business did not mean there were fewer demands on their time (quite the opposite actually) but it gave them the ability to decide which demands mattered most.
There were YMCA activities, school events, travel sports, and countless volleyball games. Through it all, family came first. That family story has now come full circle.
The baby who once sat in a carrier in the greenhouse is now working there.
Their oldest daughter, Emma, followed her parents to Virginia Tech, graduating in 2024 with a degree in crop and soil environmental science. At her parents’ urging, she first spent nearly two years working at James River Nurseries before joining Poplar Ridge in February.
Already, she is bringing a new generation’s perspective to the business, building customer relationships and expanding Poplar Ridge’s presence on social media. Marion James is also teaching her the production side, from irrigation to machinery, so she understands not only how the business operates today, but what will be required to care for it in the future.
For Kristy and Marion James, having Emma join them is meaningful, but so is what they hope she inherits.
Marion James hopes Poplar Ridge will always retain the feel of a small, family-run business rather than someday becoming part of a large corporate operation. That desire reflects a philosophy that has guided the Packetts throughout the past 25 years.
“You hear the phrase a lot of times, ‘If you’re not growing, you’re going backwards,’” Marion James said. “Well, I kind of agree to a point, but I think you can grow in making what you already have better.”
Better, he said, does not necessarily mean bigger. It is a lesson that seems to describe more than their nursery.
From one greenhouse, two customers, and family members gathering on Saturdays to plant, Poplar Ridge has grown into something Kristy and Marion James could hardly have imagined when they began. Along the way, they have weathered storms, recessions, and the ordinary growing pains of building a business from scratch.
But perhaps their greatest success is that, while growing Poplar Ridge, they never lost sight of the life they wanted the business to make possible.
They built a successful nursery. They raised three daughters. They remained rooted in the Northern Neck community they love. And now, one of those daughters has come home to help tend what her parents planted more than two decades ago.
For the Packetts, it turns out that growing well has never simply meant growing bigger.
It has meant growing something worth passing down.