Saturday, July 11, 2009

Meadow View Growers - New Carlisle


This operation is celebrating its 25th anniversary, and does a great job of providing an enjoyable family atmosphere with goats, donkeys, a sand box and more. They also do a great job displaying plants in the landscape to show customers mature specimens.

Fall is a big time for Meadow View, with 30,000 mums currently growing in preparation for September and October sales. They have an 8-acre cornfield that gets cut every fall for a corn maze, which drives customer foot traffic in droves.
Meadow View is very heavily plant-oriented, with 53 percent of sales coming from annuals, bedding plants and hanging baskets. Twenty-six percent come from perennials, and the marketing manager said the company just recently began expanding its shrub selection.

One idea from this operation is the heavy focus on container plantings with signage saying “Contain Yourself.” An entire greenhouse is dedicated to mixed containers planted up in fun ways, including in antique appliances. You can tell they have a lot of fun with this section.
Meadow View also has a booming wholesale division, which just built a new Nexus atrium-style structure with sidewall vents. Currently they are testing about 20 different varieties of mums in the glass house to see how they grow (currently they grow mums in open air hoop houses).
For more on Meadow View, visit http://www.meadowview.com/.

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