Successful succession

It was the late ’90s: The Spice Girls were on the radio, blow-up furniture was in kids’ bedrooms, and Amy Ryan was a teenager weeding garden beds at Stonehouse Nursery in Berrien Springs, Michigan.

Amy was working mornings at a bakery, but she wanted a second summer job to save up for college, and she liked plants.

The nursery’s owners, Jay and Patty Steinhauser, were family friends — Jay had worked with her uncle, who had helped build the first greenhouse, and her grandpa and dad lived next door to Jay and Patty, with her dad helping to build the business’ office.

So, they hired the young Amy for their summer planting crew in 1997.

“I like being outside, and I really enjoy plants when they're not my mom's garden. And I liked the physicality of the labor,” she says. “Being able to actually see, making progress when you have an empty greenhouse and you're potting and you're putting it down, there's this huge sense of accomplishment as you're eating up that ground space and putting something down that's going to root out. And I like the process.”

One day, a frazzled Patty — both a business owner and a mother of three young children — walked by Amy, who said she was thinking about going to college to study horticulture.

Patty, who had done the same, let Amy know what she thought of the plan.

“Don't do it.” (Says Patty now: “I wouldn't discourage anybody from going into horticulture, but she caught me on a bad day.”)

It’s a good thing Amy didn’t listen.

Amy — who took a winding path back to Stonehouse through culinary school and years working in kitchens — eventually became the nursery manager. And now, she’s the new owner of Stonehouse Nursery, officially taking over the business from the founding Steinhausers in 2026 — a success story of a horticulture business staying in local, experienced hands.

The beginnings of Stonehouse Nursery

Jay and Patty grew up in the same Illinois town and were childhood friends; they reconnected after high school. They relocated to Michigan in 1984 and have now been married over 40 years.

Patty has always had a passion for plants; she went to school for horticulture and worked for a wholesale grower. Jay worked outside the industry in quality control. But they were both interested in starting a business — specifically, a nursery.

“This was the '80s, '90s...I think there were a lot of smaller nurseries, whether it be retail or wholesale, a lot of backyard propagators and that kind of thing at the time,” Patty says. “And that's when the perennial industry in the late '80s and '90s was really taking off.”

Patty and Jay Steinhauser in the fall of 1992.

Patty attended her first Perennial Plant Association symposium in 1989, “and that was just kind of the icing on the cake, knowing that this is what we wanted to do is grow perennials,” she says.

Using a translation of their German last name, they opened Stonehouse Nursery around 1990.

They started small: just the two of them out of a lean-to-style greenhouse Jay and some friends built in the backyard — really more of a nearby cornfield.

By 1996, Jay was working two full-time jobs, and he had a choice to make: “continue doing the nursery by itself or not at all,” he says.

He chose the nursery.

Today, the wholesale grower of native and classic perennial liners has about 14 full-time employees, flexing up to about 20 during summer and early fall with seasonal employees. The business has about an acre under cover in production between multiple greenhouses and another half-acre of outdoor production.

Amy Ryan keeps returning to Stonehouse Nursery

Amy, meanwhile, had decided to go to culinary school instead of pursuing horticulture.

“I was cooking, and I was working a lot of crazy hours, and I was never outside,” she says. “And I got to the point that I needed a break. So, I took a summer off to go work at a rewholesale nursery in Ohio right after we had relocated to Ohio. And I loved it. All the anxiety and all the things from the kitchen just kind of went away. It was fabulous. And then at the end of the season, I went back to the kitchen and walked right in and went, ‘Oh, this is no longer for me.’ And then I started looking at working on the transition to go back to something that I really enjoyed.”

Amy earned her degree in nursery and greenhouse production and management from The Ohio State University in 2010 after returning to Stonehouse for the first time to complete a greenhouse internship.

She was hired on at the Ohio State Agricultural Technical Institute in Wooster as the campus greenhouse manager, an experience she loved.

But she just couldn’t stay away from Stonehouse.

During a 2015 Halloween visit for her kids to go trick or treating with their grandparents in Michigan, Amy talked with Jay and Patty, who were looking for a nursery manager.

They called the next day to offer her the job, and Amy officially was back at Stonehouse again at the start of 2016.

“I've known Jay and Patty for a long, long time,” she says. “I feel like working here and working with them, they're very kind and supportive and generous people. And our industry is like that. And I realized that more and more being in it and just realized that's the kind of place that I wanted to be.”

The Stonehouse Nursery crew in 2025.

The transition from the Steinhausers to Amy Ryan

When Amy took the nursery manager job back in 2016, she’d asked about opportunities for partnership or ownership.

When Jay and Patty started thinking about the transition process for the nursery around 2019 by attending industry talks on succession planning, they didn’t really have a plan in mind.

But it was really always Amy.

“Amy's got drive when she wants to do something," Jay says. "It was just really, really good timing for us as far as just taking a load off of Patty and I, spreading things out and just making things run better. Amy's had a big impact on just what we do here and how we do it.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic slammed into 2020 and continued into 2021 and caused myriad disruptions and glitches, including with the nursery’s employment, Jay says it was “enough to make me want to just throw my hat in, say, ‘I'm done.’”

Things turned around in 2023, and they began to seriously focus on the future of the nursery. By the start of 2025, they told Amy they wanted her to take over the nursery at the start of 2026.

“She has got a passion for plants and a passion for people. And it's apparent, the love of the industry,” Patty says. “And when she came on working with the people that we have, she's just got a gift.”

Truthfully, Jay questioned why Amy would say yes, given the turmoil of the pandemic years.

But it was an easy decision for Amy.

“My dad had his own business. I guess I've always kind of looked that direction for myself,” she says. “I think some of it is just being really driven and some of it is if I work this hard, why wouldn't I do it for myself? So, it's always kind of been something that I've wanted to do.

And where else could she do that but Stonehouse?

“Stonehouse has been a passion of mine for a long, long time. I love this place. I have a deep history here and a long-term love for it,” she says. “Jay and Patty are incredible people. They've given so much to me and helped, I think, build and shape who I am and have given me so many opportunities that the possibility or opportunity to be able to take someplace that is so far in my history and part of my story and then be able to take on the care of that, I think that's a pretty awesome opportunity. I don't know how you say no to something like that.”

Amy Ryan is the new owner of Stonehouse Nursery.

The future of Stonehouse Nursery

Amy officially took over ownership of the nursery at the start of 2026. But Jay and Patty aren’t running out the door just yet.

Jay plans to stick around until mid-summer, and Patty said she’ll stay on as long as Amy will have her, just at a slightly slower pace.

They’re currently working on more clearly defining processes and procedures, and they’ll of course always be around to answer any questions Amy has.

“It's all about setting Amy up for success,” says Jay, who admits he is looking forward to crossing some items off his bucket list in the near future.

To vendors and from the outside looking in, there’s really no change at Stonehouse. All existing orders are still being filled, and new orders will continue to be taken through independent sales representatives, brokers and directly with the nursery.

Looking ahead, Amy is excited about expansion opportunities at Stonehouse. (There had been plans in place in the past few years, but COVID derailed them.)

“Oh, I think we have a bright future. And I am really excited about it,” she says. “I like our product line. I like what we do. I'm looking forward to expanding that a little bit. The plants are the fun part, seeing what fits and what we can add, how we can grow. I see expansion in the future, but not in the too near future. I have a few things to figure out first, but I’d really love to grow Stonehouse.”

And how do Jay and Patty feel about the future of the business they started more than 35 years ago?

“Jay and I started the business from scratch, and it's just nice to know that it's in good hands and going to keep going,” Patty says. “I'm very excited to watch Amy grow even more. And even just this past month or two as we've gone to shows and watched her, not that she doesn't know all these people already, but just she's got a new glow about her.  She's got it. Anybody who works in this industry knows that it's not easy, but I have full faith that she's going to make it. She's going to rock it.”

Emily Mills is the digital editor of the GIE Media Horticulture Group. Contact her at emills@gie.net.