Finding their niche

Fairy and water gardening pioneers

Oak Park Landscape & Water Garden Center
Location: Swanton, Ohio
Founded: 1984
Retail facility: 2 acres
Annual sales: $600,000 to $800,000
For more: www.oakparkwatergarden.com, www.weetrees.com

Oak Park has offered fairy gardening supplies for 15 years, long before the hobby became popular for gardeners and lucrative for garden centers. Diane Giddens, who owns the store with her husband, Richard, said they decided to put an extra emphasis on it about five years ago as the category grew in popularity. They even have a website, www.weetrees.com, dedicated to that segment of the business, and 10 percent of their sales is from fairy gardening. After Christmas, the business closes until spring, and the staff builds wooden and concrete fairy houses by hand. Some are painted, while others are left as a blank canvas for customers to get creative. Oak Park offers classes where folks can learn how to embellish them. Nearly two entire rooms of the garden center are devoted to fairy gardening furniture, plants and figurines, and there’s an outdoor path lined with fairy and gnome scenes to inspire girls, boys and the kids in all of us.

As its name indicates, Oak Park also offers products for customers to build water gardens from the ground up, including pumps, statues, fountains, fish, liners and plants. They also provide classes and free water testing to ensure customers have success with their products. Diane Giddens also created garden beads, which the staff makes out of concrete and PVC pipe that can be stacked upon one another to create the base of a birdbath, fountain and other pedestals.

Terrarium and edibles experts

Hoen’s Garden Center & Landscaping
Location: Holland, Ohio
Founded: 1980 as a retail business
Retail facility: 5 acres
Annual sales: $1 million
For more: www.hoensgardencenter.com

Hoen’s Garden Center & Landscaping's retail department is in a greenhouse, and owners Bob and Theresa Hoen (pronounced Hain) use rustic wooden signs, striped tapestry, lattice and clever merchandising to create clear, attractive and easy-to-navigate departments. One of their specialties is herbs, a department that boasts more than 100 varieties. 2013 has been the best year so far in the six years they’ve offered the selection, Theresa says, with plants like chives, basil, rosemary and parsley being the most popular. The Hoens try to make it easy for customers — they package herbs and vegetables together so new cooks have everything they need to make salsa or sauce for an Italian dish. Vegetables are another niche for Hoen’s, which offers 200 vegetable varieties, including more than 80 varieties of tomatoes and more than 50 varieties of peppers.

Hoen’s also specializes in the whimsical, offering more than 700 fairy gardening accessories, not including the tiny plants, and a terrarium department with everything customers need to create mini landscapes. Theresa says they started offering fairy gardening items nine years ago, and they provide free hands-on workshops, the soil and allow customers to buy what they want. Theresa says offering $25 kits would limit customers’ creativity, and Hoen’s sales. Theresa says the workshops usually bring in $50 to $100 a person, and during one recent workshop, two customers spent $250 each.

Putting down new roots

Black Diamond Nursery
Location: Perrysburg, Ohio and Toledo, Ohio
Founded: 1953 Perrysburg
Retail facility: 8 acres
Annual sales: Not available
For more: www.blackdiamondtoledo.com

Black Diamond Nursery specializes in products plant enthusiasts need to bring the operations indoors during that bitter cold winter season in Northwest Ohio. Customers can find everything they need to build their indoor gardens from the ground up, including hydroponic growing systems, organic fertilizers, soils, light systems and accessories.

The nursery also has plants and products for outdoor oases, such as birdbaths, unique pottery and of course, annuals and perennials. Hydrangeas are popular in the area, so the nursery stocks up and offers about 20 varieties, says Nursery Manager Dave Noe. The Perrysburg store has done particularly well with tree sales, Noe says, because subdivisions are popping up in the area that was once primarily treeless farm fields. And, unlike the big box stores, Black Diamond plants trees for customers to help ensure success. Trees now make up 15 to 20 percent of sales, Noe says.

All IGC Photos : Michelle Simakis  /  Lilypad And Flower:  Dreamstime.com