Garden Center magazine hit the road and headed down south to North Carolina this week to tour independent garden centers retailers big and small in the area to discover the latest trends in the industry and find out how the season is going. Associate editor Michelle Simakis is driving to different towns in the western part of the state (and one in South Carolina) to meet with retailers and talk to them about their business. Here’s her recap of the third day of her visit:
Reems Creek Nursery, tucked into the mountains of Weaversville, N.C., is a family-run, independent business that primarily carries green goods and has a robust vegetable category. The company grows about 75 percent of its annuals, perennials and vegetables on its former location, the 3-acre property with the family home where her parents started it all in 1979.
Co-owner Susan Reavis says business was tough a few years ago when the economy took a plunge. In fact, most of her sales went down, except for in one category – vegetables. Sales, especially tomatoes and peppers, increased. Now they offer about 50 varieties of red, yellow and orange tomatoes, big and small, including plants like ‘Celebrity,’ Iron Lady’ and ‘Golden Jubilee’ and 30 varieties of peppers, including the ever-popular hot peppers. Look for more on Reems Creek soon.
Next I headed east to Pike Nursery in Charlotte, N.C. Pike has 15 locations in the Atlanta area, but decided to branch out into Charlotte in 2007, says assistant manager of the store Joey Pellegrin. Most of the garden center owners and operators I met know many of their customers by name, customers who have been loyal for five years to a decade. Employees at B.B. Barns, The Garden Company in Arden, N.C., compared their store to the old Cheers theme song – it’s a place where everybody knows your name. But Pellegrin’s area presents an interesting challenge. He estimates that 70 percent of his customers are non-native to the area, which has just been developed in the past decade, and many want to grow the same plants they did in Ohio or New Jersey the same way in North Carolina. That means he and the rest of the staff must be sure to explain that full sun conditions in North Carolina are not the same as full sun conditions in New Jersey.
But Pike has had success in the new area, and we’ll have more on that soon.
Today I’m looking forward to seeing Nikki Weed, horticulturist at South Pleasantburg Nursery in Greenville, S.C., and a contributor to Garden Center magazine. To find her articles, go back to the homepage at www.gardencentermagazine.com and enter "Nikki Weed" into the search box. Look for highlights from my visit soon, and follow our updates on Facebook.
Photo: Reems Creek Nursery in Weaversville, N.C.
Garden Center heads south updates: