Walking into the greenhouses at Michler's is like stepping back into time. While city traffic speeds down Maxwell Street and UK students hurry by on their way to class, the visitor to Michler's enters an oasis of green, accented by brightly colored flowers. Over the trickle of water from hoses and fountains, the visitor hears the quiet conversation of staff and customers and chirps of birds.
Michler's greenhouses are not ultra modern. With well-settled bricks and gravel paths between the long wooden tables of plants, they seem more like the greenhouses on an English estate of some years ago. That's not surprising, for they were started in 1902.
Carl Michler immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1869. In 1897, he moved to Lexington to open a business based on his training in floriculture and landscape gardening. His two sons, Charles and Louis, grew up helping in their father's business, which was called Michler Brothers. Charlie later opened Michler Nurseries on Richmond Road, offering landscape gardening.
Louis took over Michler's Florist. When his son, Karl, returned from World War II, he joined the business. Until the 1960s, it was rare to ship flowers. Michler's Florist grew most of the plants and cut flowers it sold, both retail and wholesale.
Karl Michler and his wife, Jean, developed a reputation for designing and supplying all of the bouquets and arrangements for weddings. They and their crews of employees would handle as many as five weddings in a single weekend.
By the 1980s, Michler's began seeing a demand for potted plants, which continues today. Changes in shipping helped begin the delivery of fresh flowers from Europe, South America and elsewhere.
Michler's may be old - in fact it is the oldest continually operating florist and greenhouse in Kentucky - but it's always up to date. When Karl and Jean's son, John, took over the business, he saw that Baby Boomer customers didn't have the time to maintain elaborate gardens. He reintroduced hardy perennials, native Kentucky plants, and herbs to a new generation of customers.
"We're probably the only [local] place carrying herb plants year around," John Michler said.
With help from his partner, Claudia, Michler added catalogs and informal gardening classes for customers. Paralleling the trend toward green gardening, all Michler plants are grown by organic methods, but the classic flowers for which Michler's is known are still an important part of the business.
Michler said that his business "has three aspects: a family florist shop, the growing and selling of plants, and garden design and installation." Coping with the weather and increased seasonal business are the most difficult parts. "I can't keep an eye on everything at once, so having good people working with me is important," Michler noted.
Visitors to Michler's can find shrub and climbing roses, alternative ground covers, heirloom garden plants, water plants, orchids, house plants, cacti, foliage plants, cyclamen and spring bulbs. They can ask John or his dozen employees for advice or arrange for Michler's to plan, plant and maintain their entire garden.
Michler's has been installing flower gardens all over the Bluegrass for 30 years. One of his creations is the neighborhood association's garden by the swimming pool in Woodland Park.
The demand for garden design and installation has increased rapidly in recent years. "It came out of our plant growing business. It's flower arrangement on a grand scale - much of the same aesthetics," Michler explained.
New at Michler's is a line of bonsai plants. "It's a small niche and small businesses have to find small niches," Michler said. "We keep up with new varieties of perennials and we've added a line of flowering shrubs."
The lower-maintenance flowering shrubs, which include lilacs and a new hybrid called Ninebark Summer Vine, are for "people who like to garden but are getting older. They can have flowers without having to bend over to care for them."
The best marketing tool is having people walk into the florist shop and then see the greenhouses. "That inspires them and then they want to come back," Michler said. While the old greenhouses are being restored as necessary, "we want to keep that feeling of Old Lexington," he added.