Gary Chisholm is trying to make a living growing and selling plants
here in the Cayman Islands. At his nursery in Hutland, North Side he
mostly concentrates on shrubs and palm trees but he also has indigenous
species for sale. “I’ve got sea grape, ironwood, silver thatch, pepper
cinnamon, fiddlewood and mahogany.”
Growing plants locally would naturally seem to make sense. It
creates jobs for Caymanians. The threat of importing foreign pests and
insects is reduced and rather than sending money overseas to the big
wholesalers in South Florida, the money stays here and circulates in
the local economy. Despite the obvious positives of buying locally and
supporting Caymanian producers, Chisholm says he is getting no support
from the major local nurseries in town that supply the market. He
claims most of them have not even bothered to come up and check out his
plants. According to Gary Chisholm, “the only thing they don’t import
is maiden plum because they can’t find it in South Florida; if they
could find it there they would be importing that as well.”
Chisholm would like to see Government take a more proactive stance
and place restrictions on the importation of certain plants that could
easily be grown here and supplied by local producers. “Government could
raise import duties by 50% to discourage the importation of certain
plants that we can grow ourselves. There is a market out there, but
currently we can’t access it.”
One of the local nurseries contacted by the Compass admitted they
hadn’t yet been out to look at Chisholm’s nursery in North Side, but
added that “Mr. Chisholm needs to improve his marketing and perhaps
reduce his prices to be more competitive.” In response Chisholm said
the cost of land and water in Cayman made it challenging to compete
against South Florida prices. “I am almost between a rock and a hard
place with this, plenty of days I feel like giving up but this is what
I know how to do.”
If you are interested in checking out Chisholm’s Nursery, it is about one mile down Hutland Drive on the left hand side.