A lingering winter chill squeezed the busy spring season for Central Kentucky’s plant and garden businesses into a few short yet robust weeks this year. But Lexington’s local garden centers, greenhouse nurseries and landscaping companies, many of which are multigenerational family businesses, are well-versed at adapting to changing conditions, whether they be market or nature-driven. A few have been doing so for more than a century.
“It was like we went straight from winter to summer,” said Janna Pemberton Schmidt, who runs Pemberton Greenhouses with her siblings, Ashley Pemberton Herndon and Colin Pemberton, and her husband, Jeff Schmidt. “It’s been a strong but fast year, because of the late freeze.”
The plastic-covered greenhouses at Pemberton, located off Georgetown Road, are loaded with cascading hanging baskets and long rows of bright geraniums, begonias and other popular blooming stock this time of year, along with packed tables of tropical palms, orchids and ferns. In July, the nursery will begin tending to its seasonal inventory of more than 18,000 poinsettias, hand-pinching each plant to encourage full and festive blooms in time for Christmas.
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From left, Jeff Schmidt, Janna Pemberton Schmidt, Colin Pemberton and Ashley Pemberton Herndon are sixth-generation operators of the family-owned Pemberton Greenhouses, located off Georgetown Road just inside New Circle in Lexington. / Photo by Estill Robinson
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Pemberton's plastic-covered greenhouses are loaded with a variety of plants. / Photo by Estill Robinson
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Pemberton's also offers plant rentals and plant storage, a service often used by restaurants and businesses. / Photo by Estill Robinson
Schmidt and her siblings are the sixth generation to run the family business, which was started in 1871 and passed to them in recent years from their mother, Judy Pemberton. The nursery has evolved multiple new services to address the regional community’s plant needs, including plant rentals and storage services, for residential and business clients who don’t have the time or space to keep their planted invest-ments thriving for the entire year.
Local restaurants also use the service to decorate their outdoor patios with greenery during the warmer seasons. Pemberton now has 20,000 square feet of dedicated greenhouse space for plant storage, and it houses roughly 2,000 to 3,000 plants every year. The company also contracts to supply plants for multiple local horse shows and equine competitions.
An urban oasis
Pemberton isn’t the only longtime Lexington nursery business that has found new ways to serve a changing marketplace of regional consumers.
Tucked away on Maxwell Street near downtown Lexington, Michler’s Florist, Greenhouses and Garden Design has been a peaceful one-acre respite for gardening enthusiasts for more than a century. The property was purchased in 1903 by the great grandfather of John Michler, and the surrounding neighborhood grew up around it. In recent years, John’s son, Robin, has taken on more of the management responsibilities, along with his sister, Jessamine, who oversees the floral business.
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Jessamine, John and Robin Michler of Michler's Florist, Greenhouses and Garden Design. / Photo by Estill Robinson
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Michler's added its Kentucky Native Café four years ago. / Photo by Estill Robinson
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Patrons linger at picnic seating at the café. / Photo by Estill Robinson
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Kentucky Native Café serves beer, wine and nonalcoholic beverages, along with light bites and salads, during the spring and summer months. / Photo by Estill Robinson
Although its location hasn’t changed, Michler’s has had to adapt and reinvent itself multiple times over its 115-year history. Today, the greenhouse specializes in a year-round selection of native and flowering plants, with a wide selection of perennials in addition to annuals, herbs and specialty shrubs.
As both grower and retailer for much of its perennial stock, Michler’s carries a wider selection year-round than garden centers at typical big-box stores, which generally stock a seasonal rotation. Doing so gives the family business a better knowledge and control over how the plants are grown, Robin Michler said. Michler’s also handles garden design and installation for customers who want the added services.
“We’ve tried to help people think in terms of plant collections,” Robin Michler said. “We like to hear what their project is and offer a grouping of plants to fit the concept.”
More of today’s gardening consumers are looking to do something different with their lawns and gardens, Robin Michler said, and to create functional outdoor spaces that they can enjoy. That spirit has been brought to life at Michler’s in the Kentucky Native Café, which was created four years ago from an underutilized greenhouse and a former composting site at the back of the property.
“To succeed in the long term with a small business like this, it takes the ability to reinvent yourself multiple times.” —Robin Michler
Patrons can linger at picnic seating and cafe tables set among lush plantings beneath a tall canopy of shade trees anytime the greenhouse is open, and enjoy beer and wine along with nonalcoholic spritzers, cheese plates and salads when the café opens evenings and weekends from April to October.
“It gives people a way to enjoy a garden space right here, using the same concepts we employ in other people’s gardens,” Robin Michler said.
While boosting the company’s already solid greenhouse business wasn’t the café’s primary intent, both businesses have helped the other grow, Robin Michler said. He has noticed that customers tend to wander between the café and the greenhouse, especially on weekends, and the café has also brought more floral business clients, who typically place orders by phone or online, onto Michler’s premises.
“To succeed in the long term with a small business like this, it takes the ability to reinvent yourself multiple times,” Robin Michler said. “It’s not just one reinvention.”
Budding opportunities
The need to transform with the times is something that Stephen Hillenmeyer understands well as the current patriarch and the fifth generation to operate his family’s 177-year-old company. Hillenmeyer has spent half a century in the local landscape and garden industry, starting at the age of 10, when his father put him and his siblings to work pulling wild onions on the family farm of more than 250 acres near Sandersville Road—mostly to stop the kids from bickering, he said.
“If you are picking wild onions, you’ve pretty much got a job that never ends,” Hillenmeyer said.
Over the years, the family’s nursery business transformed into one of the area’s first and largest retail garden center operations, starting around the 1950s. Stephen Hillenmeyer’s brothers, Louie and Chris, were partners in the business, until they eventually sold their interests. Louie Hillenmeyer went on to found the local Louie’s Flower Power shops and sold his interest in that retail company two years ago as well.
Today, under Stephen’s leadership, the Hillenmeyer company has divested itself of its retail operations and now specializes in landscape design, installation and maintenance services, rebranding itself this year with a name change from Stephen Hillenmeyer Landscaping Services to simply Hillenmeyer.
“If we had stayed in the retail business, trying to compete with some of the big-box centers, it would be really hard to do that,” Stephen Hillenmeyer said.
Instead, Hillenmeyer refocused the family’s growing expertise and business acumen on becoming a one-stop shop for the landscape and mowing needs of local farms, equine enterprises and commercial clients. The company has also acquired three Weed Man franchises, one of which is local and two located in Tennessee, along with a Mosquito Authority franchise. The franchises now serve more than 7,500 customers in Central Kentucky alone.
And the sixth generation of Hillenmeyers has stepped up to continue the tradition, as Stephen Hillenmeyer’s sons, Chase and Seth, have joined him in the business. Chase currently serves as vice president for Hillenmeyer, and Seth heads up its franchise operations.
Hillenmeyer said it has been exciting for him to see his sons taking leadership roles to move the family business forward.
“Our ability to adapt and adjust has allowed us to stay in business,” Hillenmeyer said. “I don’t know what the next opportunity is … going to be, but that’s what is going to keep our business going to the seventh generation.”
Common Roots
Although Hillenmeyer no longer operates a retail garden center of its own in Lexington, its legacy is linked to several local companies. Stephen Hillenmeyer refers to such relationships as the “coaching tree”—a reference to the mentoring between coaching positions in sports leagues like the NFL.
Steve King worked for Hillenmeyer before he launched his own Danville-based garden center, and later King’s Gardens in Lexington in 1999. In 2008, he moved the operation to its current location on Nicholasville Road—previously a Hillenmeyer location that King had once managed for the company. The family-owned business, which maintains its own growing range with five heated greenhouses in addition to its re-tail location, is currently managed by King’s son, Wes. The center rotates its inventory to carry a bud-and-bloom selection that emphasizes the latest varieties currently in flower, Wes King said, in addition to a wide selection of fountains, pottery and other outdoor decor.
Chris Redmond worked as a manager for King’s Gardens, and his wife, Sherry, worked for Hillenmeyer prior to the family’s launch of Redmond’s Garden Center in 2001. The Redmonds carry a full line of retail and re-wholesale plants, along with gardening gifts and accessories ranging from wind chimes and outdoor artwork to fairy garden furnishings, at their 5.7-acre center, which is also in the Nicholasville Road corridor.
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Sherry and Chris Redmond, along with their canine companion, Freddy, at their garden center off Nicholasville Road in Lexington. / Photo by Estill Robinson
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Popular bedding plants line the tables at Redmond's Garden Center. / Photo by Estill Robinson
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Redmond's Garden Center also offers gardening-related gifts and accessories, such as supplies to make a fairy garden. / Photo by Estill Robinson
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Photo by Estill Robinson
Wes King said the local garden business community is closely knit.
“Everybody knows everybody,” he added. “Everybody is either family or has worked for one another at some point.”
Both the Kings and the Redmonds have worked to build their centers into one-stop shops providing a full array of landscape and maintenance services, as well as expansive selections of trees, shrubs, annuals and perennials, and garden-related gifts and supplies.
While many local garden centers weathered the last recession well, they continue to face similar challenges related to its fallout. Many growers went out of business or cut back during the economic downturn, Chris Redmond said, which has made it difficult to source enough matured inventory to meet demand now that the market is on an upswing.
Even with this year’s short and hectic season owing to a late freeze, however, Wes King said it is shaping up to be a good year, and it’s the personal relationships—with customers, within companies and across the business—that make the work worthwhile.
“We like to say we are ‘people’ people first and ‘plant’ people second,” King said. “It’s a wonderful industry to work in.”