Plant nursery raises wages, buys land two years after becoming worker-owned co-op
Published March 18, 2026 | By Heather Holland
Gorham, Maine — Since O’Donal’s Nursery became a worker-owned cooperative in the beginning of 2023, business has boomed with the company seeing a $600,000 sales increase in the past year alone.
O’Donal’s is a plant nursery and garden center founded in 1953. It became a cooperative when the previous owner retired and sold the business to his employees.
The cooperative’s success has allowed O’Donal’s to give pay increases and healthcare and 401k benefits to more employees. It also helped O’Donal’s purchase the 10 acres of land underneath the nursery, securing the future of the business and opening the horizon to the possibility of expansion. They closed on the purchase of the property in December of last year.
“It takes a lot of work, but that’s what happens when workers take ownership of the business,” said Kyle Dutra, O’Donal’s CEO and a worker-owner. “We’re not afraid to put in the extra work, because this isn’t just someone else’s business. This is our business. We don’t want to waste or throw things away. We know that everything we do affects our bottom line.”
Today, O’Donal’s Nursery has 36 worker-owners. With more minds and skillsets contributing to running the business, it’s no surprise that more customers are coming through the door, Kyle said.
“The average tenure of an O’Donal’s employee is 18 to 23 years,” Kyle said. “There are people working at the nursery who have been here for more than 50 years. They’re passionate about every single thing we grow.”
One defining change since becoming a cooperative is that they’re taking more risks, Kyle said. For instance, instead of running the same ads in newspapers as they’ve done for decades, the co-op decided to spend their marketing dollars reaching new audiences and customers.
On Earth Day, they partnered with the Portland Seadogs, giving each baseball game ticketholder a free tree plug with a QR code leading to O’Donal’s website.
“Successful businesses aren’t stagnant,” Kyle said. “You can try and you can fail, and that’s a good thing. Thirty-six people putting their heads together is better than one.”
Other changes include hiring more people and keeping seasonal workers on for longer. Hiring people feels like a risk, but it means that customers get a better service experience, Kyle said.
Looking forward, O’Donal’s is looking to expand its footprint to grow more of its own plants. They already grow many of their own plants, but some are imported from other growers. This strategic step is even more important now with the recent spike in transportation and logistics costs, Kyle said.
“We also want to continue marketing our brand,” Kyle added. “We want to be the best nursery in the state, in the country, in the world.”
CDI is proud to have supported O’Donal’s Nursery in their transition to a worker-owned cooperative. When O’Donal’s last owner, Jeffrey O’Donal, decided he was ready to retire, he sought out the help of CDI to sell the business to his employees. Jeffrey believed it was a way to preserve the family-culture and legacy of the company.
“I’ve worked at a lot of corporate places, so the way the cooperative works is much different from what I was used to,” Kyle said. “I was used to bosses saying, ‘you better do it, or else.’ At O’Donal’s, it’s more collaborative. It takes a lot longer for decisions to be approved or denied, but that’s perfect for this industry. When you have 60 years of not a lot of change, it’s hard to change quick. The cooperative business model helps us slow down the decision-making process and make better decisions together.”
