Garden center up for sale

WASILLA -- "Landscape Supply closed for business on Saturday Jan. 10. Customers who have plants being wintered over will receive instructions in the mail; in the meantime, your plants are being cared for," states a kind but brisk voice on the voice message system at Landscape Supply.

Although joint owners Blake and Lynn Berry and Gary and Libby Fawcett expanded in several different directions to reach new customers -- adding a line of hot tubs and a drive-through espresso shop -- the decision was made after the first of the year to relinquish ownership of the business back to local developers and former owners of Landscape Supply, Howard and Ann Nugent.

"They struggled -- it just didn't work for them," Howard Nugent said Wednesday. "Now we have it for sale again."

A message left in conjunction with this story received no response as of Thursday.

Nugent had financed the sale of the property, but took it back when the Berrys and Fawcetts decided it wasn't working out. He's not going to operate it, however -- he said his other business enterprises keep him too busy to consider managing the garden center once more, although he is currently caring for the plants being wintered over at the greenhouses.

"I've got too many other commitments in the construction field," Nugent said.

Nugent and his wife, Ann, started the business in 1988 "down in the pit," Nugent said, referring to the site off the Palmer-Wasilla Highway now operated by Uresco. Four years later, they moved it down the highway to the 12-acre site near the intersection of the Palmer-Wasilla Highway and Seward Meridian Parkway. The Nugents operated Landscape Supply at its new location until 2001, when they sold it all -- business, land and inventory -- to the Berrys and Fawcetts.

Although the inventory, land and buildings are all up for sale, Nugent said, the business is not. Landscape Supply's closure, Nugent said, also means the Landscape Supply business name is put to rest.

"It's a garden center waiting for an owner," said Nugent, who recently came into possession of the building and land that previously housed Landscape Supply.

Nugent said he's hoping to sell the inventory, land and buildings together, and has a tentative price tag of between $2.5 and $3 million on it now. If it doesn't sell together, he said, they may have to parcel it up and sell parts individually. Judging from the interest, Nugent said, a new owner may be found soon.

"We've had several inquiries," Nugent said, adding that no deal is final until all the paperwork has been signed. For more information about the business, call 373-5817.