BURLINGTON - Residents who have driven by the Ammon Wholesale Nursery over the years and wished they could purchase something from its vast selection of flora are in luck.
"We realized that telling people for all these years that we don't sell to them may not have been such a good idea," Greg Ammon, owner of the nursery, said. This will be the first full summer of retail sales.
The Ammon family has been involved in horticulture in Boone County for 60 years. Greg Ammon's father, Richard, focused on landscaping and design when he started out in 1950 on a small parcel of land in Florence that is now Mall Road. The elder Ammon developed the landscape plan for the Boone County Arboretum and also designed the original landscape for Kings Island.
The nursery moved to its current location at 6089 Camp Ernst Road in 1964 and Greg Ammon, now 56, began working there right out of school in 1973.
At that time, the nursery was growing container plants and some field plants and Ammon decided to start selling to other landscapers and garden centers. That soon became the focus of the business and while it still is, retail customers can now purchase from the selection of more than 1,000 varieties of plant materials. The range includes everything from perennials, shade trees and shrubs to some more exotic and hard-to-find items such as Japanese maple trees.
With more than a half a century of experience, the Ammon family has developed contacts across the country and can accommodate almost any request.
It looks as if the family legacy will continue as Ammon's son, Clay, has started his own landscape company, Ammon Outdoor Design, at the Camp Ernst facility.
"He's interested in growing, but he does a lot of unique landscaping," Ammon said. "He's kind of followed more in his grandfather's footsteps."
Ammon admits the decision to add retail sales was partially a result of the economic downturn. Boone County has experienced rapid growth for a long time and with plenty of business from developers and other wholesale customers, there was no need to cultivate a retail business.
"Retail customers usually require a lot more attention and don't buy as much," Ammon said.
As development has slowed throughout the tri-state, even those wholesale customers who continue to purchase have cut back. Often customers who had an aggressive development schedule would buy large quantities to lock in pricing and ensure delivery.
"A lot of them are buying job-to-job now," he says.
Ammon says there are many advantages to purchasing retail items at a nursery instead of a big-box retailer. In addition to the large selection, most of which is grown on site, there is also the wealth of experience from a knowledge staff that can help ensure plants will flourish.
Often, Ammon says, people see an item they want, but it may not be the right choice for the type of soil they have or the conditions it will grow in.
"We ask questions that some others might not," he said.
The nursery farm has about 95 acres and there is also a farm on Ky. 8 in Boone County that has about 60 acres, a smaller lot in Petersburg and a few leased plots in other parts of the county. Ammon grows on a total of about 220 acres.
Some wholesale customers pick up deliveries at the other locations, but the nursery on Camp Ernst Road is the only one that offers retail sales and it is open six days a week, year round.