This year marks a big milestone for two of our employees here at Loma Vista Nursery. Alfredo Rios and Manuel ‘Chico’ Castro have been members of the Loma Vista Nursery family for 20 years! Alfredo Rios is our shipping manager; he makes sure that your deliveries get to you on time. Chico is a section head, he helps educate other workers about the plants we grow here and helps to take care of the plants in section 3, which contains grasses, hydrangeas, roses, and many more plants!

Alfredo our shipping manager.

When they started at Loma Vista Nursery, Chico began his career here at Loma Vista Nursery as an irrigation specialist and working with the machinery we use for planting. Alfredo has worked at many of our locations. He began his career here at our tree farm location digging trees and loading them to ship. He then moved onto the landscape distribution center in Olathe, Kansas where he became a key player in doubling the sales and the depth of our offerings in a little under two years’ time. Rios played a large part in our distribution center, becoming Kansas City’s premier wholesale landscape supplier, a true one-stop shop. He was the General Manager of this location until it was sold in 2016. In 2013, Alfredo played a key role in setting up the second distribution center in Kansas City, Missouri. Helping to design and implement the entire facility and trained the team member who took over the day-to-day managers of that site, which was also sold in 2016. Alfredo then moved to our Ottawa location where he is currently the Shipping and Logistics manager.

When you work for a company as long as Alfredo and Chico have worked for Loma Vista Nursery, you have the opportunity to make lots of memories! Chico’s best memory of his time here at Loma Vista Nursery is having worked with RC. Castro had this to say about RC, “He is a great person who taught me a lot about plants!” For Chico, the best part of working at Loma Vista Nursery is learning how to grow and develop all kinds of plants, and being able to teach his co-workers all about plants. He is proud to belong to the Loma Vista Nursery family. Alfredo’s favorite memory is the summer that his son came to work here, he also enjoys working with our customers and vendors.

When asked about how things have changed in the last 20 years Rios said “We’ve grown a lot, moved a few times, and dealing with the recession in 2008, the ups and downs with freight and trucking.” In his time at Loma Vista Nursery, Alfredo has gained a tremendous amount of knowledge about the nursery business, he has been successful in all aspects of the business including sales, procurement, management, distribution and logistics.

Chico with a large catch from a day of fishing.

Work is important but so is what goes on outside of work! Outside of their time here at Loma Vista Nursery, Chico likes to make wooden furniture, work in his vegetable garden and spend time with his family. Alfredo like to golf, play baseball, ride bikes and watch TV.

We are so appreciative of Chico and Alfredo’s years of service here at Loma Vista Nursery! We look forward to many more years with them!

Learn More About Plants From Us!

Our staff members are experts in the field! We love helping people learn and understand more about healthy plants that perform well in Midwest landscapes. Feel free to email us at sales@lomavistanursery.com or call us at (785) 229-7200 to get help with your plant-related questions.