At the recent South African Nursery Association (SANA) awards, Stodels Nurseries achieved a hat trick, winning the coveted Gold Medal for Nick Stodel, as owner of the nurseries, Young Retailer of the Year for Joseph Dzviti and Best Garden Centre in the Western Cape for the Belville branch.
Nick Stodel
The Gold Medal won by Stodel is the association's highest accolade and is presented to a dedicated member who has been a loyal supporter of SANA and contributed to the green industry over numerous years.
Stodel says, "It is a great honour to be selected by the board of SANA for this award. During my years on the board and as president, I learnt so much and am very grateful to the retailers across the country. It is not an easy time for garden centres in the Western Cape but we continue to relook at adapting to the changing environment and the current drought conditions while encouraging gardeners to save water and go indigenous."
A golden career
From the age of six, Stodel was ‘working’ as a trolley assistant in his father’s garden centre. After finishing his B Comm degree in 2000 at Stellenbosch University, he started working at the business. He was originally GM and then after five years bought the business and took over as MD.
During these 17 years, Stodel has not only operated the five garden centres but been very active in the gardening industry locally and internationally. He served on the SANA board from 2007-2013 and was president from 2010 to 2012. He was also a board member of the International Garden Centre Association (IGCA) from 2005 to 2015 and has travelled extensively visiting garden centres in 15 countries, lecturing to horticultural students and garden centre owners on the trends in retailer plants.
In 2011, he became the first person from the southern hemisphere to be elected as a president of the IGCA. Based in Canada, the IGCA represents the interests of national garden centre associations worldwide. Stodel says this appointment meant that South African garden centres had access to the cutting edge of international trends and innovation across Europe, North America and Asia. “Getting ideas from around the world and networking with people willing to share detailed information about their businesses, because they do not compete in the same country, offered real benefits,” he said.
Nick Stodel and Joseph Dzviti
Young Retailer of the Year
In three years, Dzviti has gone from being an assistant at Stodels Nurseries in Bellville, with no retail experience, to being named Young Retailer of the Year by SANA. The award is handed out annually to a retailer, under the age of 35, who shows promise and is committed to the industry. It is based on a written motivation, which highlights the nominee’s quality of work, dependability, initiative, interpersonal relations, teamwork and, most importantly, their value to the organisation they work for.
Despite the current challenging times for garden centres in the Western Cape, the retail business believes it continues to offer customers solutions to gardening in water scarce conditions and train their horticulturists and staff to promote water wise planting.
