The news that LE Cooke Nursery is closing is a sign of just how depressed the independent retail nursery market is. According to the statement they released, their customer count has, over the last 10 years, fallen from about 1700 to about 500, and still declining. This leaves one bare root supplier for California, Dave Wilson Nursery.

As LE Cooke mentions, the worrisome part of this for those of us who love to garden and grow things is, “other wholesale nurseries selling canned fruit trees seem to be purchasing solely on price and not the best varieties for homeowners, but rather commercial farmer varieties with quality geared for shipping and storage to the markets, not best flavor that we seek.” Yes, the box stores and their suppliers are partly responsible for the dumbing down of the gardening public. They don’t care if the varieties they sell are the best for your area, just how quickly they can sell through them. People who have never gardened, or are interested in gardening will find success eludes them and eventually give up. This is not good for the long term outlook of bringing in new gardeners, and customers.

Are bare root fruits and berries a dead category? Will people only buy in cans? I’m concerned that the planting of fruit trees in one’s backyard may be slowing down. Why plant, when mobility and job changes causes one to move more frequently? Why invest in the small orchard when you’ll just have to leave it all eventually?

Those of us who still make a living in the independent garden center trade now have to find new suppliers, and in many cases there are no new suppliers. As more, and more large growers jump on the box store train, the remaining ones will close. There are simply not enough of us smaller stores to keep them afloat. This is not a death knell for small garden shops, but it does mean we have to continue being nimble, and quickly responsive to the ever changing garden center scene.

It’s certainly interesting, and a bit sad to see the predictions we made 10 years ago coming to fruition. Major suppliers heading to the box stores, small garden shops continuing to close, and most important, a public that will never know there was something better, and much more special, than that chain store garden shop.