Queen City questing

During the last week of September, The Garden Center Group’s members assembled at the annual Fall Event in Cincinnati, Ohio. Along with the anticipated information sharing, seminars on best practices and fellowship with IGC owners and managers, attendees were treated to a regional garden center tour. The six-stop, 83-mile round-trip tour wound through the outskirts of Ohio’s Queen City and featured a wide range of IGCs, each with a unique style and customer focus. Group members explored the Fall Festival grounds of Burger Farm and Garden Center (burgerfarms.com), participated in a scavenger hunt through event-friendly and flower-focused Benken Garden Center & Florist (benkens.com), lunched at the seasonal Natorp’s Nursery Outlet (natorp.com), roamed the well established generational grounds of Berns Garden Center & Landscaping (bernsgardencenter.com), marveled at the renovated White Oak Gardens (whiteoakgardens.com) and relaxed at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden (cincinnatizoo.org). — Patrick Alan Coleman

1. At its current location for 84 years, Benken Garden Center & Florist bucks the trend of declining floral operations in IGCs. A full 25% of its business is retail floral, and it also thrives as an event venue. While the events are often booked by outside customers, Benken has its own in-house event schedule, which staff said was a “game changer” in 2023.

2. Founded in 1956, Berns Garden Center & Landscaping has four divisions: landscaping, production greenhouses, personal gardener services and retail garden centers. Its flagship garden center was completed in 1996 and offers customers 10,00 square feet of retail space, 22,000 square feet of outdoor covered shopping space and a greenhouse.

3 & 4. Burger Farm and Garden Center has been holding its annual Fall Festival for 50 years. Multiple generations of visiting families love the games, rides, puppet shows and animated “Pumpkinland” at the agritourism event. Attendees also have plenty of time to shop the six acres and 48,000-square-foot covered retail area.

5. Natorp’s Nursery Outlet is a sprawling plant complex that’s all about moving volume — and it succeeds in that mission. The outlet is only open seasonally — 13 weeks in the spring and seven weeks in the fall — but manages to pull down profit while maintaining a lighthearted family-friendly atmosphere.

6. This year, the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden played host to a trial garden that extended throughout the grounds. The trial garden featured permanent plantings, allowing garden visitors to see plants side by side and in a real garden context.

7 & 8. White Oak Gardens is the story of a successful expansion. After more than 20 years of modest yet successful nursery operations, White Oak made a $1.3 million investment in 2017. The result is a state-of-the-art, high-tech retail greenhouse that offers a sleek and comfortable shopping experience across 12,000 square feet.