November 2007
Greenhouse Grower Magazine

Profiting Responsibly
By Laura Drotleff

Inspired by his family’s history in tobacco and vegetable production, Jay Fraleigh of Fraleigh Nursery in Madison, Fla., used to lay awake nights, thinking about the basic tenets of producing vegetables on a large scale. Thanks to what he says was “a gift from above,” he eventually saw that water management and automation practices could be easily incorporated into container nursery production, with some alterations. Six years later, the patented Gro-Eco™ system he developed has been called “the future of production horticulture,” and its products are gaining ground with retailers and landscapers…

Fraleigh plans to continue to develop Gro-Eco™ with environmentally like-minded partners to provide responsible products to the end-user, he says. “We want the end user to feel good about their purchases and we want to grow nationally because horticulture is growing,” Fraleigh says. “This is a tough business but it’s a great business, and Gro-Eco will make it a better business…”

By far one of the most important benefits of the Gro-Eco™ system, Fraleigh says is less impact on the land. “I’m not digging ponds and ditches and trenches, and becoming a waste water treatment plant,” he says. “Environmentally, it’s the best way I have seen to produce container plants.”