B.S. - Ornamental Horticulture and Landscape Design, 1989 Area of emphasis: Landscape

John started his own company after obtaining his degree from the former Department of Ornamental Horticulture & Landscape Design. Puryear Farms Inc. is a locally owned and operated Landscape Design/Build Firm servicing Sumner County and surrounding areas since 1991.

Their team of professionals, dedicated to customer service and using only quality products and expert installers, put Puryear Farms at the forefront of the landscape industry in Middle Tennessee. Their base of operations is a one hundred acre nursery located on the banks of the Cumberland River south of Gallatin, Tennessee. Services include landscaping, installation, irrigation, and low voltage lighting systems.

is dedicated to customer service and using only quality products and expert installers put Puryear Farms at the forefront of the landscape industry in Middle Tennessee. Our base of operations is a one hundred acre nursery located on the banks of the Cumberland river south of Gallatin, Tennessee. Our services include landscaping, installation, irrigation, and low voltage lighting systems.

Says John...
"As an Alumni, I would recommend that Horticulture students take more classes such as your “professional practices” and some business management classes over on the main campus. I was a senior in business when I switched majors and came over to the Ag Campus. I was afraid of getting a business major and finding myself transferred all over the country in pursuit of advancing my business career. Family and my hometown are very important to me as my family have lived in Gallatin since 1806.  I changed majors to horticulture so that I could start a nursery on my family farm and raise my children here in Gallatin."

"My “down and dirty” advice is ….
If you are an entrepreneur and wish to own your own business, then study management and gain a better understand of people and “what makes them tick”.  Learn to listen …and not to dictate. Surround yourself with people who excel in areas in which you are weak and don’t think that you must be “the expert” at every task that goes on in your business. Be familiar with all aspects of your business but step back and let those individuals, to whom you have delegated, do their job. Learn to sympathize with the concerns and needs of your employees but don’t allow employees to dictate the policies and direction of the company based on their personal desires. Every time you develop a new policy… place yourself in the role of the employee and ask yourself if this is a place you would want to work. Always look at growth as the means to provide new opportunities for advancement to those who work for you, not as a means to obtain more profit. ( by the way…. the profit automatically follows the success and growth of those who work for you)."