The Hines Nursery bankruptcy is no surprise here. Over the last couple of years the number of visitors that come to this blog looking for Hines Nursery News has been steadily growing. Google Hines Nursery Blog and up comes this blog. All this time the people most affected by the problems at Hines have been coming to this blog and this one particular post for information. I, and anyone who checked in on that post over the last year could see the writing on the wall.

This amazes me! One of the biggest horticultural concerns around goes bankrupt and the only information you could get about what was going on over the last year was management saying they have a plan, and the people who worked at Hines telling it like it is here.

Why did this blog become a lightning rod for Hines Nursery News? It was the only place where people who worked with Hines could speak their mind and be heard. Following the stats you could see someone would post a comment and soon someone at Hines would check it out. Pretty soon people who didn't bookmark the blog address would Google “Hines Gecko Blog” to get here.

There is another reason why this became the place to go for info on Hines. From the very beginning my posts about Hines have been from the perspective of a former customer. The small nursery that felt left out as companies like Hines sold their souls to Home Depot and Lowes. That's their right, but so what. It still amazed me that a company like Hines would sign on to a program like pay for scan, where they are not paid till Home Depot sells it. If the mega chain didn't sell a plant, Hines wasn't paid. Let them all die on the tarmac, even before they got into the store? Home Depot didn't pay, Hines picked up the bill, and the dead plants. Of course none of us small, independent garden centers ever received this type of special treatment.

Things have changed. Before small garden centers like mine could only speak up at trade events or to sales reps. Now we have blogs where we can speak our minds, and it's changing the face of the horticultural world.