Alumni

Bettina “Tina” Rovito Bemis ’81: Cultivating a Flourishing Career

Jared Scott Tesler
A former member of the Shipley Sprouts, The Shipley School’s award-winning Upper School horticultural club, established in the 1970s by Resident Horticulturist Leila Cleaves Peck, Bettina “Tina” Rovito Bemis ’81 has made quite a name for herself as a floriculturist and ornamental horticulturist.
 
“Being a member of the Shipley Sprouts gave me a place where I belonged. I spent at least an hour in the Greenhouse every day, transplanting, watering, and pruning. I learned how to make hypertufa planters out of cement, peat moss, and perlite to enter in the Philadelphia Flower Show,” recalls Bemis, co-owner—with her husband, Ed—of Bemis Farms Nursery, a 150-acre garden center, farm, nursery, and greenhouse in Spencer, Massachusetts. “I like to joke that I teach that same class at my garden center today, and it’s probably the one thing I learned in high school that I can tie directly to my income!”
 
Indeed, each year, Bemis designs and leads more than 450 workshops on container gardening and garden-related crafts—wreaths, swags, centerpieces, and other arrangements—at her garden center as well as a variety of garden clubs, libraries, senior centers, restaurants, breweries, and schools throughout Central Massachusetts. Through her consulting business, That Workshop Woman, she counsels other garden centers around the country in hosting successful seminars and classes. This work inspired the writing of a book, BenchMarketing: 15 Ways to Increase Profits with “Make & Take” Workshops, featuring cover art by Jump Start cartoonist and Distinguished Alumni Award recipient Robbin “Robb” Armstrong ’81.
 
“The most important thing I teach is that long after people forget exactly how you taught them what you set out to teach, they’ll remember how you made them feel. And if you do that right, they’ll come back, with their friends, for years to come,” Bemis says. “The second most important thing I teach is not to focus on the profit from each individual class. Some classes make more profit than others, but some help you move the last five percent of your inventory that would’ve ended up on the compost pile.”
 
The husband-and-wife team—the two met on their first day of college at Cornell University—also co-hosts a cable television program, Bloomin’ with the Bemis’, and a radio talk show, The Gardener’s Calendar. Her areas of expertise are annuals, perennials, vegetables, and herbs, whereas his specialties include trees, shrubs, and lawns. “We complement each other extraordinarily well,” Bemis says.
 
Bemis attributes much of her professional success to being a strong-willed person: “Once I get an idea in my head, I see it through to the end. I don’t listen to naysayers if I know in my heart that it’s a good idea. I’ve spent years marching to the beat of a different drum, and while that doesn’t always make you the most popular person, it allows you to stand out in a crowded marketplace—and that’s critical in business if you want to be remembered for something.”

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The Shipley School is a private, coeducational day school for pre-kindergarten through 12th grade students, located in Bryn Mawr, PA. Through our commitment to educational excellence, we develop within each student a love of learning and a desire for compassionate participation in the world.