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Do big box stores stack up?
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May 3, 2001: 7:58 a.m. ET
Gardening enthusiasts don't always have to sacrifice quality for lower prices
By Staff Writer Shelly K. Schwartz
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Time was, backyard gardeners headed to the local nursery for all their lawn care needs.
They weren't just buying shrubs and supplies. The price tag came with one-on-one service, tips on what grows best where, and good old-fashioned expertise from store owners who had been in the business for 20 years.
Independent nurseries still exist, of course. But today they vie for market share with some of the heaviest hitting competitors ever to court the consumer dollar – big box retailers.
Home Depot and Lowe's, to name a few, boast flashier stores, longer hours and betters prices. Most, too, have long-since taken steps to capitalize on the growing percentage of household budgets being spent on curb appeal.
Home Depot alone has 1,200 stores nationwide, a greenhouse flanking each one.
But can the sales clerks tell the difference between a pruning shear and a square-end spade? And just how well do the stores stack up when it comes to quality control?
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For your annuals you can look anywhere, but for heartier plants you want to make sure the root system and the plant overall has been cared for.
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Tom Delaney, PLCAA |
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That depends on what you're looking for, said Tom Delaney, executive vice president of the Professional Lawn Care Association of America.
"Most things are fairly comparable when you're talking about rakes, fertilizer and pest control products, but I sure wouldn't ask for or expect a lot of expertise on live plant products because there's too much turnover in the sales area of these big stores," he said.
Delaney adds that home centers and discount department stores, like Wal-Mart and Kmart, are the place to go if you know what you want and are shopping by price.
"But if you're going to need real information, I'd rely on someone who does it for a living and has been there for a few years," he suggests.
From whence they came
Big box stores have been viewed as the 800-pound gorilla since they exploded onto the retail scene in the 1980s – mostly by small business groups.
 They were accused of using bulk purchase power to drive out mom and pop shops nationwide, diluting the integrity of "the neighborhood."
Oddly enough, however, small garden centers and nurseries say they don't view the Home Depots of the world as the enemy.
"We do view them as competition, but we don't view them as threatening," said Lindsay Eagle, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based American Nursery & Landscape Association, which represents independent gardeners and wholesale growers.
"The people who go to Home Depot don't know that much about gardens," she said. "In some cases, they've never gardened before. Some just bought a house and they don't want to spend a lot of time or money. But they're not hard-core gardeners."
Studies have shown, in fact, that big box stores have boosted sales for independent shops in towns that are large enough to support both outlets.
"What happens is the customers go into these stores where they get started gardening and then they hit a limit in terms of what they can find," she said. "If they really get hooked, then they eventually turn to independent garden stores."
Those who don't "were never going to be our customers anyway," Eagle said.
Who shops where?
According to ANLA data, 45 percent of the 1,600 consumers it surveyed last year selected local garden centers, nurseries and alternative channels, like small mom and pop shops, as the best venue for buying quality live plants.
Nearly 22 percent selected home centers, like Home Depot and Lowe's, and 17 percent went with discount department stores, like Wal-Mart and Kmart. The remainder did not spend money on such products.
A similar picture emerged when it came to the public's perception of how well qualified the salespeople are at these same sales outlets.
Some 56 percent selected local garden centers, nurseries and alternative channels as having the most knowledgeable staff, while 21 percent voted for home centers and 12 percent selected discount department stores. The rest had no opinion.
As might be expected, home centers and discount department stores beat out independent garden centers in the study on ease of use, value, selection, location convenience and store hours.
Mike Gettler, vice president of merchandising for the nursery department at Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse, based in Wilkesboro, N.C., said gardening represents big business for his company. The company's garden club has doubled to more than 300,000 members nationwide in the last year alone.
He notes, too, that most of the gardening products sold at Lowe's stores are between 5 percent and 50 percent cheaper than comparable products sold at nurseries and small garden centers.
"This is a very fast-growing segment because the population is aging and they like to work in their yards," he said "In today's world people want their lives simplified. They can come here and get everything they need. This is their way of getting away from all the stress."
The other big driver of gardening sales, he said, continues to be the rise in homeownership – which now stands at one of the highest rates in U.S. history.
"People have spent a lot of money on their home and they want to make sure their neighbors envy their yards," he said. "
Gettler also said the sales staff at Lowe's greenhouses are largely state certified.
Bob Jacobson, global product merchant, for Atlanta-based Home Depot (HD: Research, Estimates), reacted similarly to the issue of sales staff know-how.
"We hire very qualified personnel and we spend a lot of time in training," he said. "We hire a lot from garden centers and nurseries and try to make sure someone has a gardening background before we put them in one of our garden centers."
Taking on the big boys
Jacobson notes that Home Depot shops at many of the same wholesale suppliers as the garden centers.
"We get the same grade A material but because we buy as a wholesaler, we pass those prices on to our customers," he said. "They sell birdhouses and wind chimes. We sell the solution."
Independent garden centers agree they often buy from the same suppliers. But that's where the similarity ends, said Eagle, of the ANLA.
"It's certainly the case that the plants they buy are sometimes the same plants we buy," she said. "But the plants are better taken care of once they arrive at our store. We've got a better selection, better cared for plants and better sales help."
Delaney, of the PLCAA, agrees: "The plant quality may be about the same when they buy their plants, but a lot of times it comes down to how they care for it after they buy it," he said.
Delaney notes that he worked for the Georgia Department of Agriculture for 15 years.
"Our inspectors would go out to all the places where live plants are sold and they often found that the quality was lower at home centers and big box stores because the plants weren't taken care of properly," he said. "They weren't watered regularly and they were kept out in the hot sun. It doesn't take a lot of time for plants to lose some of their quality over a short period of time."
As far as backyard gardeners are concerned, however, Delaney said it's a simple matter of consumer preference. Beginners and those for whom gardening is less of a hobby, may wish to start out at the low-priced big box stores where basic staples like garden hoses and fertilizer can be had at a fraction of the price.
But true enthusiasts, and those willing to spend a little more for healthy live plants that are more likely to last, would be wise to opt for the nursery.
"I've bought products from both places, too," said Delaney. "For your annuals you can look anywhere, but for heartier plants you want to make sure the root system and the plant overall has been cared for." 
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