Over the years, locally owned garden centers have been the hub for gardeners and DIY landscapers around the country. The Pittsburgh area is no exception.
Now homeowners and business owners have more options than ever to get the supplies they need to have a beautiful garden and landscape. You can buy everything from potting soil, seeds, trees, tools and more online, or in a big box store. Sprawling warehouses across the country stock much of what homeowners and business owners need, all in one place, but do they offer true expertise, assistance beyond a paragraph on the package or a website with “frequently asked questions”? Typically no.
Most local garden centers however, do offer extensive knowledge to go along with the products they sell, and a commitment to the community around them.
Take a look at what you are missing out on when you choose big box stores over local garden centers below!
When you go to a nursery, landscape supply yard, or garden center like Phelps Nursery in Pittsburgh, they have a wider variety of native plants, as well as people from the area on staff who are often gardeners themselves. They know the best time to grow certain plants, the best soils to use, plants that are deer resistant, and more useful tidbits to help new gardeners, and affirm seasoned gardeners.
Big box stores may often attract workers with an interest in gardens, but they often just resort to people who can move the products around the yard, and ring them out on the cash register. Employees from other areas in the store often end up filling in for employees who did not show up to work. They are often underpaid and have little knowledge or experience dealing with plants.
When purchasing items online, unless you are familiar with the brand you are buying, products do not always match what you think you are purchasing, and there is nobody there to ask questions, or to let you know the things you don’t know.
Not to say that other garden supply venues don’t, but big box stores have a wide variety of products that span all areas of home improvement, and if one area doesn’t do as well they have others to pick up the slack. It is a numbers game. We all want to make a profit, but we don’t have a big corporate office making decisions without seeing the stores themselves. Ourselves and our employees make decisions from locations where we are regularly present. We give the plants, shrubs and trees our utmost care, and if they die, we take a loss.
Big box stores usually stock plants on consignment. This means that another company brings their goods to their store to sell on their behalf, and they only pay for what sells. The losses incurred there are not their own, so the care is not present.
Phelps Nursery has a farm in Ohio where all of our plants come from that we sell in at our garden centers, and our employees care for them regularly like they were in their own garden. Because of this when you buy a plant, tree or shrub from Phelps Nursery, you know you are getting a healthy plant!
When you shop for landscaping supplies, fountains, pottery, plants, or any other product at a local garden center, more of the money you spend stays in the community. Local companies often work with other local companies to move their products, supporting the close range economy, and in turn spending that return in businesses in close proximity.
With local garden centers, the plants are grown closer to where they are sold, so not only is the carbon footprint smaller, but the prices do not reflect the fuel and man hours of transporting plants halfway across the country from an already more expensive state. This gives you a cheaper, more quality plant for your garden!
Big box stores collect revenue for their products under one roof, amass large budgets used for advertising, and bulk wholesale purchases that put the squeeze on suppliers.
Additionally, big box stores frequently push loss leaders, (products that are sold at a loss to attract customers into the store where they may purchase other products that are marked up) at scale. Loss leaders are a long used, valid, business tactic used by businesses of all sizes. When they are deployed at thousands of locations, this causes an economic shift that can severely undercut local businesses that cannot offer that sort of pricing and many go out of business.
This statement does not aim to say that your local big box store hires spotted lantern flies or other invasive species. However since nurseries and local garden centers feature plants that are not imported from far away, they are not bringing the eggs and fully grown insects from area’s with a different food chain to disrupt your outdoor oasis.
When you purchase from a big box store, they source their plant material from all around the country, thus increasing the likelihood of diseases and insects from other areas that can cause harm to local plants and wildlife.
Plants at big box stores often have pesticides to combat these pests, but these pesticides can effect the insects on your property and have a greater negative environmental impact. Many of them harm the already dwindling bee population.
While some garden centers do order plants from the same places as big box stores, Phelps Nursery does not. We grow our own plants, and responsibly source any additional products we might not grow.
Whether it is delivery, planting services, plant diagnosis, or landscape design, your local landscape supply yard, greenhouse or nursery may offer these services themselves, or work with a neighboring business that they know well to carry out these services.
Big box stores do partner with businesses in the area for installs, but you often don’t know who you are working with until they show up, and you often get workers who are not as established and there is no personal connection between the person running the big box stores and the contractor doing the work.
It is beneficial to you to shop at local garden centers, because most of them are family owned, and they will fight for their business and livelihood. It is not just a number to them. Supporting your DIY gardening and landscaping needs is what puts food on their table. It is in their best interest to support you.
When big box stores leave an area due to poor market penetration, taking their convenience with them, they leave acres of blacktop and a sprawling branded structure that is often not demolished, or repurposed. The wildlife has already been disrupted in a major way, local garden stores exist in a diminished capacity, and jobs are lost. The land they were on requires hefty sums of money to repurpose and a such they often collect dust until legislated otherwise.
If a local garden center is going to go under, their business is a more feasibly acquired asset and will appeal to a wider range of people, many of whom already own garden centers.
If for some reason nobody takes the helm, these properties as discussed above have a more organic presentation which means the land they are on has more potential since there is less to tear down.
When you go to a big box chain near you, all the plants and trees are on shelves or on the concrete surrounded by tractors, wheel barrows, bright orange, or blue branding.
Local gardens and nurseries have rows and rows of trees and plants outside or in their greenhouse, but you are as not surrounded by concrete, allowing you to purchase plants in a more organic setting.
These photos below from Phelps Nursery West, features a picturesque, landscaped path through available trees and shrubs.
Your local garden center may often also display plants in a landscaped setting like you would have at your home so you can see their products in action. Maybe they have a retaining wall set up with a fully mulched garden bed to highlight specific products and to give you a feel of what you can have on your own property.
Not only will you be supporting the local economy, you will have a wider selection, a healthier selection, and experienced, knowledgeable assistance to get your project finished.
We offer a range of native plants, trees and shrubs, as well as fountains, pottery, mulch top soil, tools and more!
Phelps is your go to nursery and garden center in the Pittsburgh area!
Visit one of our four locations today! We proudly offer our products and services in Upper St. Clair, McKees Rocks/Robinson Twp., Cranberry, and Beaver County.
