Sponsored by Garden Market Expo
When John Dromgoole opened his first organic retail store in
“I bought a portable building, put shelves in. I had [the products] separated by a foot and a foot and a half to make it look full,” Dromgoole said.
In the first couple of years, Dromgoole pretty much sold only organic potting media, fertilizers and pest and disease controls. Twenty years later, he still sells those products, but they reside in a 20-by-25-foot section of his 8-acre garden center, which is projected to gross $5 million in 2008.
Dromgoole didn’t enter garden retail the way most in the industry do, through family ties or a passion for plants. His passion was to do something that made a real difference to people’s lives. He decided that sustainable gardening and the resulting healthier environment for his future customers would make that difference.
Pursuing a passion
Dromgoole said he’s not a “born again” organic gardener, since he’s always gardened this way. His quest to find sound organic controls and fertilizers was often a frustrating one. To get a good natural insecticide, he resorted to blending grubs that might carry Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), letting the swill ferment and using the results as a spray for the lawn.
Another incentive to find products was his audience. Dromgoole had a radio program where he focused on organic gardening and would soon have regular gigs on the NBC and PBS affiliates. His listeners had even more difficulty tracking down organic products, since they lacked Dromgoole’s connections.
Once he found a broad array of organic products he could believe in, he opened that tiny store with the wide spaces between products.
Much of what he sold he made himself or with a partner. Before he opened shop, a woman he had worked for years before made a line of potting media sold under the name Amazon River Basin Potting Soil. She offered Dromgoole a partnership if he would be willing to run the business.
He bought compost, a component of the Amazon mix, from Malcolm Beck, who owned Garden-Ville. Amazon and Garden-Ville merged, and the resulting line of products went into distribution.
“That’s how I got going,” Dromgoole said. “Some nurseries threw me out on my ear, and others liked the quality.”
The first couple of years were devoted to soil, insect and disease controls and amendments. Around 1984, Dromgoole began selling salvias, vegetables, herbs and other plants. He was finally running a garden center, even if it was a modest one.
New site spurs growth
Dromgoole was growing exasperated with his local extension service. By 1992, he was a popular radio personality spreading the word about organic gardening. But the extension service at the time wasn’t on board the way it is today.
“The extension service kept saying, ‘You can’t do that organically,’ and I wanted to show that you can,” Dromgoole said, referring to various practices he promoted on his show.
The savings and loan scandals were still percolating during this time, and a piece of property owned by an S&L went on the auction block. Dromgoole took a look at his limited finances and put in a bid of just over $100,000 for 8 acres.
“And I got the darn thing,” Dromgoole said.
Eight acres, Dromgoole knew, gave him the chance to prove the extension service wrong. He would use the land not only to retail, but to show just how well organic practices would work in
And that’s exactly what you find at Natural Gardener, Dromgoole’s garden center. It has rows of vegetables, a fruit orchard, herb garden, native plant garden, butterfly garden, labyrinth and so on.
In the midst of the garden center, near the main building and native plants and herbs, is the Compost Tea House. The staff brews 100 gallons at a time, which sells out on a busy weekend. The water used in the compost tea is rainwater, when available. A small rainwater-holding tank is hooked up to the tea house’s gutter system.
In the past year, Dromgoole has had an extensive rainwater capturing system installed. All the building gutters on the property connect to pipes that run to a large 15,000-gallon holding tank. Just 1 1/2 inches of rain will gather 7,500 gallons. The water is often used as a backup system when local construction results in water to the area being turned off for hours at a time, a nuisance that happens far too often, Dromgoole said.
The store is just outside of
“I made it a destination point. I put in features to make it worthwhile to make it here,” Dromgoole said.
Community involvement
Chemical cleanup day. “I started converting people [to organic gardening], and they didn’t know what to do with the leftover chemicals,” Dromgoole said. So he organized
“A semi would come out and a technician would accept everything -- old paint, oil cans, chemicals,” Dromgoole said. When the number of semis needed for the project grew, the city of Austin stepped in and took charge of the annual program. The city now has a permanent drop-off site for hazardous materials.
Gardening organizations. Dromgoole has participated in several local organizations, including three years as president of Austin Organic Gardeners, which he said is the oldest, continuously running organic club in the
The Texas Department of Agriculture hosted annual eco-fairs for a while, which Dromgoole was asked to head up as president. “We started some big fairs, bringing in organic farmers, suppliers and makers, and we brought in big speakers from around the country,” he said.
Public speaking and writing. Add writing and public speaking to Dromgoole’s list of skills and ways to convert the public to natural gardening. He wrote for Organic Gardening magazine for several years as the columnist for the South. He also wrote for Texas Gardener Magazine.
He travels fairly extensively to speak. He speaks to the expected groups of master gardeners and garden clubs, but also to corporations.
Dromgoole is eyeing another, more hip format where he can spread his message to a younger crowd: YouTube. “YouTube would be fun. I can do 10-minute segments on YouTube,” he said.
Children’s gardens. Every business receives requests for charity donations. Natural Gardener decided to focus on children and their school gardens. This focus helps them easily filter donation requests and to foster a future generation of gardeners.
Off-season seminars. Naturally, a garden center that puts such an emphasis on teaching has an extensive seminar schedule. But the seminars are strictly for the off-season. During spring, Dromgoole has to bring in traffic attendants to help coordinate crowds that fill his parking lot and then the streets outside of his store.
“Class attendees are given a 10-percent discount for purchases made that day, usually Saturdays during the summer and the winter and held outside under a tent. We have approximately 20 seminars during three months,” Dromgoole said.
Seminar speakers come from all over, even the extension service, which no longer shuns organic gardening.
Business sense
For all that Dromgoole has done to convert the public to organic gardening, he hasn’t neglected finances. Rather, he hasn’t neglected the business’s finances. “I’ve been here 16 years, I grew it and grew it and never took much money for myself. I put it back in the business,” he said.
Dromgoole is fanatical about keeping his credit clean. “One of the most important things other than getting in front of people, I kept my credit clean,” he said.
If he was given credit, he was careful to abide by whatever terms he gained the credit on. “That was the base for allowing me to borrow money,” he said. “For a guy who didn’t have a lot of money, I had to develop a credit line. I have to have a good history.”
Today, Natural Gardener doesn’t have any debt and does not borrow money to buy inventory.
Dromgoole took a winding road to get to where he is today, but he never lost his way.
“Having the vision was really important. It gave me a roadmap to follow to get here,” he said.
Dromgoole has lined up his next project: the garden retail industry. “That’s my next goal,” he said. “I want [garden center operators] to know you can continue to make the money and go organic. Those who don’t join are going to be left behind.”
John Dromgoole’s meandering path to owning a garden center
|
Date |
Company |
What Dromgoole learned |
|
1974 |
The Jungle Store,
|
How to make growing media and build terrarium gardens. Became fascinated with botanical names. |
|
1975 |
Lizard
|
How to work a distribution system for products. |
|
1975-76 |
Bordiers, tree and woody grower,
|
How to identify tree and shrub diseases and pests. How to propagate woody plants. |
|
1976-77 |
Los Patios, landscaping company,
|
Already spoke Spanish. How to read landscape architectural drawings; gained design skills. |
|
1977-19 |
Diedert Floral Growers, floriculture,
|
How important timing is in growing. How to identify greenhouse pests and what are appropriate synthetic controls. |
|
1978-79 |
Crystal Baking Co., garden retail shop,
|
How to maintain tropical plants in restaurants and other business settings. |
|
1979-80 |
Country Junction, retail garden center,
|
How to get free publicity from local media, including holding Tupperware-style plant-sales parties. How to be a radio garden guru. |
|
1981 |
Amazon River Basin Potting Soil (an offshoot of The Jungle Shop),
|
How to be a partner in a business. |
|
1981 |
Sweetheart Herbs, herb company,
|
How important herbs are in influencing health and healing. |
|
1981 |
|
What’s involved with owning your own business. That organic products on the wholesale market are hard to find. |
|
1982 |
Garden-Ville (partner), retail nursery,
|
How to sell wholesale organic products. How to own and operate a retail garden center. |
|
2000-present |
Natural Gardener (separated partnership with Garden-Ville and became independent), retail nursery,
|
How to be successful in marketing organics. How to create a destination garden center. |
|
2001-present |
Lady Bug Natural Brand (owner), organic garden product manufacturer and distributor,
|
How to develop a manufacturing plant for wholesale organic gardening products. |
The making of a radio and television personality
John Dromgoole’s reputation precedes him in the Austin, Texas, market. Customers drive to his store on the outskirts of town because they trust his knowledge on gardening and that Natural Gardener will live up to his reputation. For this, he can thank his years in radio and television.
Dromgoole’s first experience with radio was in his youth, when he worked at the local station in
Years later, he was managing his first garden center. He and the store’s owner concocted an offbeat idea to sell houseplants through home-based parties, a la Tupperware. Word of the plant parties spread, and Dromgoole got a call from a
“The guy figured out I knew what I was talking about and got me to do a regular gig. That went on for a little over a year,” Dromgoole said.
At that point, Dromgoole moved back to Austin, where he thought the organic gardening movement was a little further along than in San Antonio. He was soon on the air in
“I never got paid, still don’t,” he said. “But I had a philosophy that if I could convert the city, I wasn’t worried about being compensated because I could promote my business.”
After a few years, the local NBC and PBS affiliates jumped on board and began broadcasting garden segments with Dromgoole.
“I knew that the media needed a story every day, every week, every month, and I supplied it,” Dromgoole said.
He used the format to push his passion, organic gardening. As his radio years passed, his audience’s sophistication with natural gardening grew, as did his garden business.
Every retailer should be trying to do what he does, Dromgoole said. “They’ve got to be recognized, to pursue their specialty, to let the public and media know that you know about these things. You will get that free ride on publicity,” he said.
Natural Gardener
Owner: John Dromgoole.
Location:
Size: 8 acres.
Sales: $5 million projected for 2008.
Staff: 85 during peak months; 35 full-time the rest of the year.
Specialty: Natural gardening methods.
For more: (512) 288-6113; www.naturalgardeneraustin.com.
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June 2008