All photos courtesy of Colonial Gardens
Welcome to Garden Center magazine's Top 100 Week. We will be highlighting garden centers from our Top 100 Independent Garden Centers List between Sept. 9 and 13. These profiles are brought to you through the generous sponsorship of Proven Winners.
There’s a horticultural oasis just southeast of Kansas City.
An urban gardener seeking respite, plants and refreshment need only drive 35 minutes to Blue Springs, where rural Missouri brushes shoulders with the city suburbs.
There, nestled in an 80-acre patchwork of orchard, agricultural land, tree farms and hoop houses, sits Colonial Gardens, #79 on the 2024 Top 100 Independent Garden Centers List.
The business has been in operation since 1969 but was purchased by CEO Tory Schwope in 2016. But Schwope was not a stranger to the place he bought.
His family had owned it under the name Schwope Brothers Tree Farm when he was a kid. He’d spent his formative years working among the rows of trees and was deeply disappointed to see it sold when he was just 9 years old. Even as a kid, he’d vowed to get it back some day.
He made good on that vow.
Schwope’s mission for the last eight years has been to bring people closer to nature, particularly via their stomachs, helping them feed their souls and bodies while bringing beauty to their own home gardens.
Since Schwope’s purchase, Colonial Gardens has evolved from its origins as a humble nursery to a locally focused plant emporium, event space, café and agritourism destination, pulling in $6 million in revenue in 2023 — with a few alpacas thrown in for good, fuzzy measure.
When Garden Center magazine featured Colonial Gardens in its pages back in 2018, the business had just celebrated its grand re-opening after two years of extensive renovations. It still had that new garden center smell.
It was also embracing a new concept in the garden center world. It wasn’t just a place to go purchase the annual seasonal load of petunias or mums; it was a place to gather, build community, relax, shop, eat and be entertained.
Within the “modern prairie”-style main building, there were plants, gifts and garden retail merchandise, plus a farm market selling fresh produce and assorted local edibles. A café was situated along a large courtyard planted with trees, with an area for live music and events and a community room offering space for educational engagements.
At the time, Schwope was a bit concerned that the amount of offerings available at Colonial Gardens might be overwhelming for consumers who might struggle to accept the new concept.
“The whole idea is to create an experiential environment where people can connect with green infrastructure, local food gardening — all of these things in one closed loop, one continuous circle,” he told Garden Center magazine. “And the hope is that over time, they associate Colonial Gardens with healthy, good for the planet and the right way to do horticulture, whether it’s in your lawn or on your dinner plate.”
A 'third place' proof of concept
Six years later, Colonial Gardens is thriving. Sure, there have been some changes. For instance, the original Bean Counter Café is now Cultivate Café. Still, the food remains focused on hyper-local and seasonal fare, with new head chef and market manager Daniel Walker at the helm.
Colonial Gardens events have changed a bit with the times, too. Consider the regular self-care Sundays featuring yoga around the grounds. One recent class in August took place in the flower fields, with guests given the opportunity to pick and take home a bouquet.
However, it’s important to note that the changes at Colonial Gardens during the past six years are improvements to the original concept. The concept itself has been embraced — and not just by the surrounding community.
The idea of a garden center as a destination has also caught on in the industry at large. In 2018, just 6% of IGCs reported having cafes in the annual Garden Center magazine State of the Industry Report. In 2023, that percentage had doubled, with 12% reporting an on-site eatery.
There has also been a steady increase in garden centers engaging in agritourism and hosting events for both entertainment and education. It’s all part of a movement to help IGCs establish themselves as a “third place,” defined as an environment for social engagement that is distinct from the first two places: home and work.
Third places have traditionally been spaces like churches, parks or community centers, but IGCs like Colonial Gardens have become increasingly aware that despite being for-profit businesses, they have a great deal to offer customers who would like to gather and share their knowledge and passion for growing.
An example of creating that kind of community experience is Colonial Gardens' Homestead Festival. The inaugural event attracted homesteaders and DIYers to the garden center from across the Midwest and the South to learn techniques and traditional crafts to enable attendees to be more self-sufficient. The second annual event is planned for April 2025.
“We had a pig butchered,” says Colonial Gardens marketing specialist Dylan Fox. “We had a bunch of different workshops and classes. Homesteaders from Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Kansas came down to see the speakers and learn more about what practices they can implement on their own properties.”
Just in the last year, Colonial Gardens reports that events like the Homestead Festival, regular concerts and farm-to-table dinners have brought in 20,000 new customers. Many of those events are built on education.
“Our voice and our brand are really educational,” says Colonial Gardens director of business development Grace Ames. “Outside of that, we’re also fun, playful and experiential.”
Zoning in on agritourism
One of the cornerstones of the Colonial Gardens business and engagement model is the annual Fall Farm Festival and Pumpkin Patch. The event draws families to enjoy an autumnal farm experience. Kids and adults can pick out pumpkins, pick apples, play on a ninja course, commune with goats and alpacas and tour the countryside in military vehicles.
This kind of event is seated solidly in the realm of agritourism, essentially tapping into the agricultural fantasies of suburban and urban travelers who want to enjoy a slightly less dirty slice of America’s agrarian roots. But as suburban populations grow into country spaces, agritourism can cause friction with municipalities and zoning laws. That was an issue Colonial Gardens tackled head on.
Ames notes that over the past couple of years, there was “pushback” from the town where the 80-acre business sits.
“There was no agricultural zoning in Blue Springs,” she explains.
So, Ames took on the project of rezoning the property and put a planned development on the farm. She used county, state and federal agritourism laws and reconciled them with large-lot city zoning requirements.
The process took eight months, from the initial call to getting in front of the town council. And Ames went deep into farming minutiae, like the number of chickens appropriate for a given plot of land and setbacks from fence lines, to create something that made sense.
Eventually, council members were invited to the land to help them understand the vision. And it all paid off. A 39.8-acre portion of Colonial Gardens now sits on its own planned development zoning, which is for a bespoke mix of agriculture and event space.
“We now have a fantastically wonderful working relationship with the city because of our efforts,” Ames says.
Plus, if anyone else in Blue Springs wants to take advantage of the unique zoning, the rules are in place, and adopting them only requires a council vote. The ramifications of the effort will likely be long-standing and influential in the future development of the community.
A regenerative garden center
The festivals, education, events, food, animals and even the special zoning at Colonial Gardens work together to create a healthy, ecologically thoughtful refuge for garden consumers. But the business has not lost sight of the core value of their business: regeneration.
In fact, Colonial Garden representatives describe the business as a “regenerative garden center.” The term is meant to be broader and more inclusive than terms like “organic” (which requires certification) or “natural” or “environmentally friendly.”
The concept of a regenerative horticultural business allows for Colonial Gardens to take a holistic view of stewardship that encompasses everything from water and waste management to core business practices.
Ames acknowledges that garden centers have challenges with waste and resource management. And those challenges are baked into the business.
“We’re looking at always choosing the best and greenest practices we can,” she says. “Anytime we can mitigate water and plastic usage, we do.”
It’s even reflected in the landscaping. The parking area sits higher than the store. To mitigate flooding, the IGC added a bioswale that empties into a pond. That pond is then utilized to water any plant that is outside.
“Small changes like that make big differences,” Ames explains. “Even with our animals, we’re doing rotational grazing with the paddock system, so we’re maintaining something growing on the fields and not creating bare spots. We bring produce back into the market and café to bring people fresh food and talk about how it’s not that hard to grow carrots that are more delicious than you might find in the grocery store.”
It’s all meant to create a closed feedback loop on the land, which ultimately nourishes growth and biodiversity on Colonial Gardens' 80 acres.
It adds up to less waste and more efficiency, sure. But also, the regeneration takes place in the community that visits the garden center as they are fed and taught best practices for their own cultivation that is easier on the land.
Colonial Gardens acknowledges they are still just starting out. Ames notes there is a development plan for the business that looks forward nearly 20 years.
There is plenty of space to grow in the horticultural oasis just southeast of Kansas City, and what’s to come promises to be even more lush, delicious and enlightening.
Patrick Coleman is editor of Garden Center magazine. Contact him at pcoleman@gie.net.
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