[springfever]

I have been thinking about and investigating starting a garden center in my local area for two years. It is the fastest growing community in six states and the growth is staggering. I really like being a contractor and don't necessarily want to be tied down like that, but I am getting older and can't plant trees, lay block and pavers forever. I feel I am missing out on a lot of sales to do-it-yourselfers in the area, just by not selling plant material. I also feel that having a store front will boost the install side. The only drawback is cost and location. I really need an outdoor space instead of office space to hold and sell plant material. Ideally I would like to have display gardens to show off my work too. Has anyone else thought of this or have any suggestions?

[johnkeegan]

I've thought about it for the same reasons you mentioned but the major drawback is that it's retail and I don't want to sacrifice my weekends. That time is for my family and my sanity. Yes, I could try to find someone to totally run it on the weekends but inevitably I know where the buck stops. If they want the weekend off ... are sick...quit...have problems...

[Gardenhaus]

We had a garden center for ten years along with our construction company. When we were consistently booked 6 month to a year out, we changed the garden center to appointment only and then we sold only excess materials from our projects. We like to buy direct from nurseries and sometimes we need to order extra plants to meet the minimums.

These plants are usually sold via our electronic newsletter that we send our twice a month. We let customers know what we have and how many and it is a first come first serve buying plan.

The drawbacks to garden centers are many. You are right with the extreme hours commitment. Our garden center was 100% drip irrigated which saved countless hours and provided our clients with better plants.

Our challenge was, we make a lot more money in construction than retail. With a degree in LA and 30 years experience we are the professionals in our area. You can't stop people from coming into your garden center and asking you a lot of questions and then they go to the box store to purchase their plants.........the time it takes to educate the public on what why and when is endless.........if you want to do it right. We determined the people who could afford to have us do the work wouldn't buy from our garden center...we would build their garden. And the ones who bought in our garden center wanted our knowledge but in the end were not willing to pay for the huge difference in quality......

We never looked back at what we did with the garden center.....as I said we now use it as a holding yard and appointment only sales........we pefer to be kayaking on the weekend and not worry if a freeze is coming in or if japanese beetles are eating our Climbing Hydranges.

We have extensive display gardens at our office that we developed over the years and we continue to use them as a selling tool. No other contractors offices around here have that and if fact the little landscaping that they do have is usually weedy and overgrown....now there's a sales tool!

[r schipul]

Another approach you can take is create display gardens around either your own house or office and use those as a sales tool. I live on 10 acres (2-3 of which is useable for storing/growing plants. We have zoning approval to open a retail nursery on our property as long as we sell only plants and meet the state's requirements for a farm.

My plan someday is to grow plants and have areas to store plants which we buy in. Being in a residential area has it drawback but it also gives me a lot of options down the road. I can determine if I want to go the open house route (open a couple times a year), strictly use the property just for business, invite only or operate it more as a nursery. There are similar places in my area which open spring through July 4th and then close for the summer. Being in a residential area you can get away with this approach. Being in a commercial district it's 9-5 seven days a week.