Meet #87 on 2025 Top 100 Independent Garden Centers List: Luis' Nursery

Celia Espinoza and Violeta Gonzalez fondly remember the days they spent growing up in Luis’ Nursery, playing in a pool set up by their father, Luis Gonzalez, and running back into the greenhouse to keep warm.

“This place is his baby — his favorite child,” Violeta Gonzalez, now manager of retail operations at the nursery, says, laughing.

Luis’ Nursery — No. 87 on Garden Center magazine’s 2025 Top 100 Independent Garden Centers List — is nestled in Visalia, California, catering to homeowners and landscapers. The family-owned and operated business grows its own plants across 11 acres and sells retail on 4 acres, offering flowers, shrubs, trees and groundcovers.

Luis Gonzalez, an immigrant from Mexico, took his first job in California at a Japanese nursery, learning the art and culture of Japanese gardening.

“He’s very meticulous and very orderly,” says Espinoza, general manager of operations at the business. “Still to this day, he very much goes back to what he did in the ’70s at the Japanese nursery.”

After spending two decades in the industry working for others, Luis Gonzalez opened the doors to his own nursery in 1991, bringing his passion and expertise in horticulture to every sale he made.

Luis Gonzalez didn’t expect the nursery to still be open and thriving 30 years later, Violeta Gonzalez says. Instead, the nursery was a way for the Gonzalez family to survive. Luis Gonzalez and his wife hoped to accomplish one thing: sending their daughters to college.

Now, at 75 years old, Luis Gonzalez shows up to work seven days a week, retirement far from his mind. His daughters, now college graduates, alongside Celia’s husband and nursery manager, Larry Espinoza, are planning for a prosperous future at Luis’ Nursery based on three Cs: culture, community and commitment.

Changing times

“Since we’ve been working here full-time, every one of us has brought something different to the nursery, and we’re all learning new ways to keep going forward,” Celia Espinoza says.

Moving forward has been the hallmark for the next generation since they entered the business in 2010, a period of financial crisis for the nursery. Business was down following the economic recession, a severe drought and the loss of an important employee who helped run daily operations, complicating the nursery’s position.

“We had to really start changing how we were doing business and shifting our focus into updating our practice and how we were going to appeal to a retail audience,” Larry Espinoza says.

The nursery pivoted to prioritizing homeowners, as landscapers and gardeners moved to buying directly from wholesalers. The family put effort into creating visually appealing displays, offering an organized shopping experience for plants. However, Larry Espinoza emphasized that their commitment to and focus on customer experience over the past 10 years has played a significant role in their continued success.

Merchandising is half the customer experience equation, and the other half is staff, Larry Espinoza says. Luis’ Nursery is committed to hiring passionate, smart plant people who are welcoming, friendly and ready with answers for technical questions — but also willing to tell customers when they don’t know something.

“A big part of it, too, is that there’s no ego. This family business is in the trenches with everybody,” Larry Espinoza says. “The public sees that, the staff sees that — we’re all doing the same things that we’re asking (the staff) to do.”

Everyone keeps an ear to the ground, following trends and movements in garden centers and beyond. The nursery’s clientele is multigenerational, with customers now bringing in their college-aged children who are more interested in houseplants.

“Every generation we see each year means something different at our nursery,” Celia Espinoza says. “We have to push for all generations right now.”

Changing with the times also means offering variety. A hundred different varieties of plants take up the same amount of space that once held thousands of azaleas. Offering branded products attracts customers, as does as a new shrub department and an annuals department.

While he doesn’t use social media much, Larry Espinoza has noticed that customers readily listen to influencers’ opinions on gardening, noting that it “blew me away.”

Violeta Gonzalez recounted a story of a customer in his late 60s who regularly watches plant influencers on YouTube and asked for plants that none of the employees had heard of.

“You don’t have to like it, but you have to understand it,” Larry Espinoza says. “You have to try to adapt to it. That’s how we run the business.”

Growing the future

For the past couple of years, Tulare County, where the IGC is located, has warned Luis’ Nursery that the road will be widened, which would impact the business’ parking lot. The family made the decision to move the nursery across the road, allowing for a safer driving and parking experience for customers and employees.

But the move is not just for convenience. It’s also an opportunity to future-proof the business against water regulations.

Regulatory bodies will greatly impact what the business can do in the next 10 to 20 years, Larry Espinoza says, because regulations will dictate how much water can be used to grow plants. Customers will also face changing water regulations, impacting how they choose to plant at home.

The plan? Turn Luis’ Nursery into a destination garden center. Becoming a destination means transforming a business into a desirable and memorable location that people willingly visit or travel to. Destinations aren’t just about what’s for sale — it’s about the experience.

Celia Espinoza explains that the goal is to create a multifaceted garden center with food and entertainment: spaces where customers sit and sip on coffee, yoga classes on Saturday mornings, petting zoos, classes taught by experienced staff and a space to sell local produce. The goal is to give back to the community and provide a third place that’s about more than an IGC — which is an ongoing trend in the garden center industry.

“The community is the biggest reason we’re here, and we’re here to support that community,” Larry Espinoza says.

The first phase of the project is creating an indoor presence, starting with a barn structure that can accommodate houseplants and a gift shop. The family is hopeful to break ground next year and is already preparing customers for the upcoming move. While the coffee shop may be a few years off, the family plans to provide food trucks in the meantime. This lets customers know that food and drink are available on site — and builds the habit before a permanent structure is created.

Additionally, a botanical garden walk is in the works. The walkway will delineate the garden center from being just somewhere to shop — it will be somewhere for people to enjoy natural resources.

“It’s funny because we’ve already been telling our regular customers about the move, and their immediate reaction is that it’s terrible that the county is making us do this,” Violeta Gonzalez says. “The county isn’t actually making us move — we technically don’t have to. We have a choice to operate with less, but we don’t want that. We see it differently, and we’re excited about the future.”

Hayley Lalchand is a freelance writer for Garden Center magazine.

More on the Top 100:

The 2025 Top 100 Independent Garden Centers List

Hear from Editor Patrick Alan Coleman on why we changed the list

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