Where there is construction, garden centers will

[Steve]

How interesting is it to see how well some of these garden centers are doing. Even with competition from the big box stores, these garden centers seem to do alright! How do you think the garden centers do in your area? Spring Creek: Moving, Expanding: Nursery gets room to grow - With sales skyrocketing, Craig McGowen had to face the facts: Spring Creek Nursery was too big for its footprint. In April, the south Tulsa nursery will celebrate a $500,000 expansion and relocation that will double its size, said McGowen, the company's vice president. Spring Creek has most of its trees shipped in from Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas and Oregon. The business grew 20 percent to 30 percent in its first three years, McGowen said, and sales doubled in 2006 to more than $4 million. Spring Creek's customer base has expanded from mostly Tulsans to include customers from Northwest Arkansas and the Wichita area. In fact, Spring Creek plans to open a nursery in Elm Springs, Ark., this fall, which will be another $250,000 investment. McGowen expects to have more than 20 employees at the Tulsa nursery this year, including hired laborers who work from spring until late fall. "It's gone from a mom-and-pop kind of nursery to a real corporation now," he said. Because of the large, expensive homes being built in south Tulsa and the surrounding suburbs, owners usually don't skimp on the landscaping, which sustains Spring Creek and other nurseries. "They'll spend $10,000 or more on landscaping on these large houses," McGowen said. The landscaping business in Tulsa is very competitive, and Spring Creek has "hired a lot of new people" whose work has contributed to the growth, he said. "Customer service is a big part of our company, and that's how we got 90 percent of our customers," said McGowen, who earned a landscape architecture degree from Oklahoma State University.

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