Floriculture Production (U.S.) — NAICS 111422

An investor's primer. NAICS (the North American Industry Classification System) code 111422 covers the farms and greenhouses that grow cut flowers, potted plants, bedding plants, and foliage — not the shops that sell them.

1. Overview

Floriculture production is the growing end of the flower and ornamental-plant business: greenhouses and open fields that raise cut flowers, potted flowering plants, indoor foliage plants, garden bedding plants, and the young plants ("plugs" and cuttings) that other growers finish. It is a farm-gate business — the value created before a plant reaches a garden center, supermarket, or florist [3].

Why it matters to an investor: this is a roughly $6.7 billion farm-gate industry in the United States [1] that feeds a much larger consumer floral and gardening market. It is discretionary, seasonal, weather-exposed, labor-heavy, and — for cut flowers specifically — largely displaced by imports. Its economics reward scale and low-cost production, which is why the top of the industry is consolidating fast while thousands of tiny farms sit at the bottom.

Ways in: public-market investors have only thin and idiosyncratic direct exposure. There is no large-cap pure-play U.S. flower grower. The nearest listed production exposures are a micro-cap tulip grower (Bloomia Holdings, Nasdaq: TULP) and a large greenhouse operator embedded in a diversified consumer company (Central Garden & Pet's Bell Nursery). Everything larger is indirect — floral retail/distribution, garden-supply brands, or the big-box retailers that buy most of the plants. Direct ownership of a greenhouse operation is a private-market play, and that is where most of the industry's economics actually live. Floriculture is more naturally an operating-business, private-equity, real-estate, and private-credit opportunity than a conventional public-equity sector.

2. What it is and how it's structured

Floriculture is a biological production business: growers buy seeds, bulbs, cuttings, or young plants; cultivate them under cover (greenhouses, hoop houses, lath houses) or in open fields; and sell finished product through wholesalers, florists, grocery chains, home-improvement retailers, garden centers, landscapers, event florists, and online channels [3].

In scope (NAICS 111422): establishments primarily growing cut flowers and cut cultivated greens, potted flowering plants, indoor/foliage plants, annual and perennial bedding/garden plants, flower seeds, and propagative material (plugs and cuttings) [3].

What it excludes — and the adjacent codes:

• Retailing plants bought from others → NAICS 444240, Nursery, Garden Center, and Farm Supply Retailers (the garden center down the road) [3].
• Woody ornamentals, shade/ornamental trees, and sod → NAICS 111421, Nursery and Tree Production (the sibling code inside the same 1114 "Greenhouse, Nursery, and Floriculture Production" group) [3].
• Other food crops grown under cover (e.g., greenhouse vegetables) → NAICS 111419 [3].
• Support activities for crop production → NAICS 115112; flower/nursery-stock and farm-supply wholesalers → NAICS 424930 and 424910 [3].

Ownership mix: overwhelmingly private, and shaped like a barbell — a few dozen very large, mostly family-owned or privately held growers at the top, and thousands of small operations below. In USDA's broader 2024 horticulture census (which spans nursery, sod, mushroom, and protected-food production, not floriculture alone), family- or individually owned operations were 56% of operations but corporate-owned operations generated 63% of sales — fragmented by count, concentrated by dollars [5]. The Small Business Administration (SBA) size standard for NAICS 111422 is $3.75 million in average annual receipts [4], meaning the vast majority of these farms count as "small businesses" — a measure of how fragmented the base is (it is an eligibility threshold, not an industry revenue figure).

Undercount caveat: standard federal business registers understate this industry. The Census Bureau's County Business Patterns excludes crop production entirely, and Nonemployer Statistics excludes NAICS sector 111 — so the many family farms and non-employer operations fall outside those frames [8][9]. The authoritative counts come from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), not the business census. Even USDA's grower survey excludes the smallest operations (see §3), so the true small-farm base is larger than any single series shows.

3. How big it is

Our supplied ground-truth federal file contains a single NAICS 111422 metric — the SBA size standard of $3.75 million [4]. It does not provide an official sales total, establishment count, or employment count for the code, so the operating figures below come from USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), which runs the annual Floriculture Crops survey — the closest thing to a ground-truth read on 111422. That survey covers operations with at least $10,000 of annual floriculture sales and counts both wholesale and retail sales [1].

The reported producer count has climbed steadily — roughly 8,949 in 2022 → 10,216 in 2023 → 11,262 in 2024 [1] — reflecting both genuine entry (a wave of small cut-flower farms) and widened survey coverage of smaller operations; read it as a trend, not a precise headcount.

By crop category (2024 Census of Horticultural Specialties): [2]

These are not an additive NAICS total — one operation can sell in several categories.

Two facts jump out. First, bedding, potted, and foliage plants — not cut flowers — are the U.S. industry. Second, domestically grown cut flowers are small (under $0.5 billion) because imports own that market. USDA's Economic Research Service (ERS) valued domestic cut flowers and florist greens at nearly $763 million in 2022 (up more than 50% since 2017 — a small but fast-growing revival), against roughly $1.9 billion of imported cut flowers; the broader "cut flowers and nursery products" import category reached about $3.3 billion in 2022 [6][7]. Roughly 80% of cut flowers sold in the U.S. are imported [7][8].

The $18.3 billion figure sometimes cited for this sector is the broader 2024 horticulture census (23,060 operations across nursery, sod, mushroom, and protected-food production) — not floriculture alone [5].

4. The investable universe

There is no large-cap pure-play U.S. flower grower. Below are the closest public exposures (company descriptions drawn primarily from Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings), then the private owners who dominate production.

Public companies (thin, mostly indirect):

Channel proxies (the buyers): Home Depot (NYSE: HD), Lowe's (NYSE: LOW), and Walmart (NYSE: WMT) are the dominant retail buyers of bedding and potted plants; their spring garden performance drives grower volumes.

Major private growers and owners (where production really sits):

• Costa Farms — Miami-based, family-run; the largest indoor-plant grower in North America; acquired Battlefield Farms in January 2024 [16][19].
• Altman Plants — family-owned national grower; large in houseplants, succulents, cactus, and ornamentals [15].
• Metrolina Greenhouses — family-owned wholesale grower for home-improvement and mass retail; merged with South Central Growers under the Metrolina brand [15][17].
• Kurt Weiss Greenhouses and Green Circle Growers (orchids, foliage, indoor plants) — leading family-owned wholesale producers [15].
• Hoffmann Family of Companies — a private investment platform rolling up greenhouses (Smith Gardens, N.G. Heimos Greenhouses, American Farms) [15][20].
• Breeders/propagators upstream: Ball Horticultural (private, family-owned), Dümmen Orange, and Syngenta Flowers — the last two combining breeding and propagation into a joint venture announced in 2026 [18].

Bottom line for public investors: you can buy the channel, the inputs/brands, and two narrow production names, but you largely cannot buy scaled U.S. greenhouse production on a stock exchange. It is mostly a private-market asset class.

5. How the money works

Floriculture is farm economics wrapped around a perishable, seasonal, capital-intensive greenhouse. Owners make money on a handful of levers:

• Sales per square foot of production. A greenhouse is fixed capital (glass/poly houses, heating, benches, irrigation, climate control). Profit depends on how much salable product each square foot yields and how many crop turns (planting-to-sale cycles) you get per year. Underutilized space erodes margin fast.
• Shrink / dump rate. Plants are perishable and the selling window is narrow (spring for bedding plants; specific holidays for cut flowers). Unsold inventory is composted or destroyed — a total loss. Managing "shrink" and sell-through is central to margins.
• Who owns the risk at retail. Big-box retailers often buy on "pay-by-scan" — the grower still owns the plants sitting on the retailer's shelf and is paid only when a plant scans at checkout. That shifts unsold-inventory risk onto the grower, a defining margin pressure in this industry.
• Input costs. The big ones are labor (roughly 36% of horticulture operating expense — the single largest line [5][21]), energy for heating and cooling greenhouses, young plants (plugs/cuttings, often carrying breeder royalties), and freight, media, pots, and plastics.
• Buyer concentration and working capital. A handful of mass merchants and supermarket chains buy the bulk of bedding and potted plants, giving them pricing leverage over a fragmented grower base; and the business funds a full crop of inventory before peak-season revenue arrives.

There is no standard federal margin or capacity-utilization series for NAICS 111422 — investors must derive sales-per-square-foot, crop-turn, shrink, and gross-margin-after-freight figures from company data.

For the domestic cut-flower niche the model is different: higher margin per stem but far smaller in scale — local, seasonal flowers sold direct to consumers, at farmers markets, or to floral designers who pay a premium for freshness and provenance (the "Slow Flowers" / American-grown movement) [28]. It cannot beat imported commodity roses and carnations on price, so it competes on locality, freshness, and specialty varieties.

6. What drives demand

• Discretionary income and consumer confidence. Flowers and ornamental plants are non-essential; demand tracks the economy and softens in downturns.
• Holidays and events. Valentine's Day and Mother's Day are the demand spikes for cut flowers (U.S. consumers spent a record ~$3.2 billion on flowers for Mother's Day 2024 alone) [27]; weddings, funerals, and year-end holidays add a steady base.
• The spring garden season. Bedding and potted plants — the largest U.S. category — sell in a compressed spring window, so a single cold, wet, or short spring can wipe out a year's profit.
• Housing and home spending. Garden-center and big-box foot traffic tracks home buying and renovation activity.
• The houseplant/foliage boom. Indoor plants surged among younger consumers during the pandemic; demand has since normalized but sits structurally higher than a decade ago — foliage is now a ~$0.9B category [2].
• Structural forces: grocery and mass-retail floral programs (broader distribution, more price/service pressure), e-commerce and direct-to-consumer fulfillment, demand for locally grown/traceable/sustainable flowers, new genetics and branded easy-care varieties, and gifting and "self-care" culture.

7. Regulation

• Labor (the dominant regulatory cost). Much of the seasonal workforce enters through the federal H-2A temporary agricultural guest-worker visa, administered by the Department of Labor (DOL). Its mandated Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR) reached roughly $19.97/hour in California and $16.23/hour in Florida in 2025 [21][24]. H-2A wage rules and broader immigration policy are the industry's biggest regulatory swing factor.
• Plant-health and imports. USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) inspect imported flowers and plants for pests and disease (most enter through Miami); phytosanitary rules govern both imports and interstate movement [22].
• Pesticides and worker safety. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates the chemicals growers use and administers the agricultural Worker Protection Standard (WPS); the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) governs workplace hazards. Neonicotinoid insecticides and pollinator-protection labeling are ongoing pressure points [23].
• Intellectual property. The Plant Variety Protection Act (PVPA), plant patents, and trademarks protect valuable genetics and brands — the basis for the royalties growers pay on branded young plants [25].
• Trade / tariffs. Cut flowers from the Andean region long entered duty-free under trade-preference programs — a major reason imports captured the U.S. cut-flower market. In January 2025 the U.S. threatened a 25% tariff on Colombian goods, then quickly withdrew it; but an April 2025 ~10% global baseline tariff ended the long-standing duty-free treatment of Andean flowers, adding an estimated $200M+ to annual floral supply-chain costs. The net effect raises import costs and, at the margin, improves domestic growers' relative position — while remaining a live policy wildcard in both directions [26].

State agriculture departments (nursery certificates, plant movement, pesticide and water use) and local governments (zoning, wells, wastewater, energy, building permits) add another layer. Regulation is usually manageable for established growers but can raise costs or delay expansion — especially when importing genetics, building greenhouses, or hiring seasonal labor.

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

• A consolidating top, a fragmented bottom. The largest growers are getting larger while smaller ones exit. Recent moves: Costa Farms acquired Battlefield Farms (2024); Metrolina Greenhouses merged with South Central Growers; and the Hoffmann Family of Companies rolled up several greenhouse businesses [16][17][20]. Bell Nursery (owned by Central Garden & Pet) has grown into the second-largest U.S. greenhouse footprint [10]. Scale buys automation, freight reach, procurement leverage, and better terms with big-box buyers.
• Import competition defines the cut-flower map. Colombia supplies roughly 60% of U.S. cut flowers (a ~$2.4 billion export sector) and Ecuador most of the rest; together the two Andean countries account for the bulk of U.S. cut-flower imports [7][8]. Domestic growers ceded commodity cut flowers decades ago and now hold defensible positions in bulky, perishable, freight-protected categories — bedding plants, potted plants, and foliage — where shipping a finished plant from South America is impractical.
• Upstream genetics consolidation. Breeding and propagation (Ball, Dümmen Orange, Syngenta Flowers) is concentrating, raising the minimum scale a supplier needs and giving breeders royalty leverage over growers [18].
• Retail power. A few mass merchants dictate assortment, price, timing/fill-rate expectations, and inventory-risk terms (pay-by-scan) to a highly fragmented grower base. Smaller growers compete on local freshness, specialty varieties, and direct relationships. Consolidation is likely to continue where capital, retailer expectations, and labor complexity exceed what a small family operation can manage alone.

9. Risks

• Discretionary demand / recession sensitivity — flowers are a cuttable expense.
• Weather and climate — a cold, wet, or short spring devastates the bedding-plant season; Florida operations face hurricanes; drought, water restrictions, extreme heat, and hard freezes raise losses.
• Energy costs — greenhouse heating and cooling are major, volatile inputs.
• Labor availability and cost — H-2A wage escalation and immigration-policy shifts hit the largest cost line directly.
• Retailer concentration and pay-by-scan — buyer leverage, payment risk, and grower-borne shrink compress margins.
• Import competition and tariffs — a stronger dollar or new low-cost supply undercuts domestic cut flowers; conversely, tariff whiplash raises input costs for anyone reliant on imported stock.
• Perishability — narrow selling windows and total loss on unsold product; working capital committed before revenue.
• Pests, disease, and variety failure — biosecurity failures, patent disputes, or a failed crop program can destroy a season's value and trigger quarantines.
• Fickle consumer trends — the houseplant boom's cooldown shows how fast a category can swing.
• Private-market diligence — family succession, opaque financials, and thin governance complicate underwriting; the few public names (notably TULP) carry company-specific liquidity, leverage, and concentration risk.

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Public-market routes (thin and indirect):

• Bloomia Holdings (TULP) — the most direct listed production exposure, but a micro-cap single-crop tulip grower.
• Central Garden & Pet (CENT/CENTA) — the largest-scale public greenhouse production via Bell Nursery, though a small part of a diversified pet-and-garden company.
• 1-800-Flowers (FLWS) — a downstream demand proxy on floral gifting.
• Scotts Miracle-Gro (SMG); Hydrofarm (HYFM); GrowGeneration (GRWG) — garden brands and cultivation inputs/equipment (tangential).
• Home Depot / Lowe's / Walmart — own the retail channel that sets the industry's spring volumes.

Private-market routes (where the asset class actually is):

• Direct ownership or acquisition of a greenhouse operation (a roll-up/consolidation play mirroring the top growers), or minority stakes and private credit / equipment finance.
• Greenhouse real estate and farmland underlying production.
• A local cut-flower farm riding the American-grown revival — small scale, higher per-stem margin, direct-to-consumer.
• Breeding/genetics and greenhouse technology (automation, controlled-environment systems), mostly held privately.

Diligence for a private grower centers on crop mix, retailer concentration, sales per square foot, labor productivity, energy exposure, shrink, working capital, debt service, water rights, permits, insurance, plant-health controls, and succession. Value it on normalized cash earnings and the replacement cost of productive greenhouse assets — not peak-season revenue — and stress-test a weak spring, higher labor and energy costs, and lower sell-through.

Near-term drivers (forward-looking judgment, not reported fact): consolidation among large growers should continue as scale, automation, and buyer leverage reward the biggest operators. The 2025 tariff shift could modestly favor domestic growers while raising input costs — a policy wildcard in both directions. Labor cost and availability (H-2A wage rates and immigration policy) are the swing factor on margins. The domestic cut-flower renaissance is real but small; the durable U.S. franchise remains in bedding, potted, and foliage plants, where perishability and freight protect growers from imports. Expect a low-growth, margin-pressured industry in which operating efficiency and retailer relationships — not top-line expansion — separate winners from exits.

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Sources

1. U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service, "Floriculture Crops 2024 Summary," 2026. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/floran26.pdf
2. USDA NASS, "2024 Census of Horticultural Specialties" (commodity-group operations and sales, Table 2), 2026. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2022/Online_Resources/Census_of_Horticulture_Specialties/
3. U.S. Census Bureau, "2022 NAICS Definition — 111422 Floriculture Production" (definition and exclusions). https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=111422&input=111422&year=2022
4. U.S. Small Business Administration, "Table of Size Standards" (NAICS 111422 = $3.75 million average annual receipts), 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
5. USDA NASS, "U.S. Horticulture Operations Report $18.3 Billion in Sales" (ownership mix; labor 36% of expenses; broader census), 2026. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/2026/02-26-2026.php
6. USDA Economic Research Service, "2022 Census of Agriculture: U.S. flower farms blossom amid growing traditional outdoor cultivation," 2024. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/chart-detail?chartId=109114
7. USDA Economic Research Service, "U.S. imports of cut flowers and nursery products grew to $3.3 billion in 2022," 2023. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/chart-detail?chartId=106472
8. University of Illinois farmdoc daily, "Valentine's Day and the Gains from Agricultural Trade: Cut Flowers in the US," 2025. https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2025/02/valentines-day-and-the-gains-from-agricultural-trade-cut-flowers-in-the-us.html
9. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Bloomia Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: TULP), Form 10-Q, 2026. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000875355&type=10-Q
10. Central Garden & Pet Company (CENT/CENTA), Form 10-K and "Central Garden & Pet Acquires Bell Nursery" (2018); Greenhouse Grower. https://ir.central.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/65/central-garden-pet-acquires-bell-nursery
11. U.S. SEC, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc. (Nasdaq: FLWS), Form 10-K, FY ended June 29, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001084869&type=10-K
12. U.S. SEC, The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company (NYSE: SMG), Form 10-K, FY2025. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000825542&type=10-K
13. U.S. SEC, Hydrofarm Holdings Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: HYFM), Form 10-K, FY2025. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001695295&type=10-K
14. U.S. SEC, GrowGeneration Corp. (Nasdaq: GRWG), Form 10-K, FY2025. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001604868&type=10-K
15. Greenhouse Grower, "2026 Top 100 Growers: The Complete List" (private grower rankings and profiles). https://www.greenhousegrower.com/management/greenhouse-growers-the-2026-top-100-growers/
16. Greenhouse Grower, "Major Move in Floriculture as Costa Farms Acquires Battlefield Farms," 2024. https://www.greenhousegrower.com/management/major-move-in-floriculture-as-costa-farms-acquires-battlefield-farms/
17. Greenhouse Grower, "Metrolina Greenhouses and South Central Growers Announce Strategic Merger," 2025. https://www.greenhousegrower.com/management/breaking-metrolina-greenhouses-and-south-central-growers-announce-strategic-merger/
18. Greenhouse Product News, "Dümmen Orange, Syngenta Flowers Form Joint Venture," 2026. https://gpnmag.com/news/dummen-orange-syngenta-flowers-form-joint-venture/
19. Costa Farms, "About Costa Farms," 2026. https://costafarms.com/pages/about-costa-farms
20. Hoffmann Family of Companies / Greenhouse Grower coverage of greenhouse acquisitions (Smith Gardens, N.G. Heimos, American Farms). https://www.greenhousegrower.com/management/greenhouse-growers-the-2026-top-100-growers/
21. University of Florida IFAS, "H-2A Workers in Demand in the Ornamental Horticulture Industry" (AEWR rates; labor share of expenses), 2025. https://ask.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/FE1141
22. USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, "How To Import Plants and Plant Products into the United States," 2026. https://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant-imports/how-to-import
23. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Agricultural Nurseries and Greenhouses" (Worker Protection Standard), 2025. https://www.epa.gov/agriculture/agricultural-nurseries-and-greenhouses
24. U.S. Department of Labor, "H-2A Temporary Agricultural Program," 2026. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/programs/h-2a
25. USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, "Plant Variety Protection," 2026. https://www.ams.usda.gov/services/plant-variety-protection
26. CNBC, "Trump Colombia tariffs: coffee, crude oil and cut flowers could see higher prices," Jan 2025; Florists' Review, "U.S. places hold on 25% tariff on Colombian imports," 2025. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/26/trump-colombia-tariffs-coffee-crude-oil-and-cut-flowers-could-see-higher-prices.html
27. National Retail Federation / floral gifting market data (Mother's Day flower spending), 2024. https://nrf.com/research-insights/holiday-data-and-trends/mothers-day
28. Modern Farmer, "A Flower-Farming Renaissance: America's Slow Flower Movement," and the Slow Flowers Society. https://modernfarmer.com/2016/03/slow-flowers/