Blue Grass Farms acquires Brehob Nursery

Blue Grass Farms, an Indiana wholesale nursery, has acquired all assets of Brehob Nursery.

The acquisition gives Blue Grass Farms four locations and about 1,150 acres in ground and container production. The company, founded in 1969, serves landscape contractors and independent garden centers.

Brehob Nursery is also an Indiana grower and rewholesale operation. It was purchased by DCA Outdoor in 2016. Kansas City-based DCA Outdoor filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Feb. 20, 2025, according to court documents from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of Western Missouri.

According to court documents, a motion to sell all assets was filed in December by the debtors in DCA’s bankruptcy restructuring proceedings. It was approved later that month, which set the framework for sales and auction processes, which will extend into mid-2026.

“John Brehob, who built Brehob Nursery up for many, many years, built that into a wonderful facility,” said Brent Schalk, president of Blue Grass Farms. “When it came up for sale again, we saw that as an opportunity.”

© Blue Grass Farms

Blue Grass Farms is located in Anderson, Indiana, 15 miles north of Indianapolis. It has a satellite sales yard on the southwest side of Indianapolis. The two Brehob locations are each between 40 minutes and an hour from existing Blue Grass Farms locations.

“This (acquisition) will surround the Indianapolis area and give us uniform coverage all over central Indiana,” Schalk said.

Schalk said Brehob Nursery continued to operate through the bankruptcy proceedings, and he’s excited to be able to offer Brehob plants to customers this spring.

“They never closed and continued to be open steadily through this time,” he said. “They had an extensive inventory, particularly on the north side of Westfield, with several hundred-thousand containers ready to market that will just come into our general inventory.”

Blue Grass Farms closed the deal March 5 and immediately took over day-to-day operations.

“From the customer’s perspective, they’ve been open every day,” said Terry Nennich, field manager for Blue Grass Farms.

Nennich said the inventory transition was simplified because both nurseries use SBI Software.

One major reason the acquisition made sense for Blue Grass Farms was the ability to more than double its container production acreage.

“We had about 80 acres of container production before and about 1,000 acres in the field,” Nennich said. “This adds about another 100 acres of container production.”

Nennich said the Indiana nursery was under-producing what the market demands for container crops. The addition of Brehob’s two growing facilities will help Blue Grass Farms balance production and distribution.

Brehob grows a wider variety of perennials than Blue Grass Farms, and they also produce more containerized trees. Since Blue Grass Farms is more heavily invested in ball-and-burlap material, the acquisition will expand the nursery’s offerings in those areas.

Schalk said Brehob’s Westfield farm is a very modern, first-class container production facility. He plans to temporarily close Brehob's Bluff Road facility for a few months, reopening Sept. 1. Renovation plans will streamline production and bring it in line with the standards Blue Grass Farms’ customers expect.

Schalk said most of the Brehob employees will remain, although he plans to add some additional workers and make some changes.

“From the beginning, we felt like it would be a good fit,” Schalk said. “So we didn’t have to spend too much time thinking about whether it was a good thing to do, only how it would fit together the best way.”

Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.

Powell Gardens, Kansas City’s botanical garden, acquired independent garden center Colonial Gardens and KAT Wholesale, two other DCA Outdoor brands, in February.