They say family roots can run deep, but that doesn’t begin to cover the roots family-owned business Round Rock Garden Center has planted over the past 21 years.
Before getting professionally involved in the gardening business, co-owner Jeff Ramert helped out as a teen at the plant nursery his grandfather originally owned in the ‘80s called Wolfe Nursery. After graduating from college, he and his wife, Stephanie, moved to Round Rock for a job at Dell. During this time, Wolfe Nursery was bought by another owner who asked Jeff to come work in their IT department.
“I found myself spending more and more time with customers and going out and not doing my regular job,” Jeff said.
Unfortunately, the nursery started to experience some financial problems and eventually went bankrupt. But fortunately for Jeff and real estate broker Stephanie, the piece of land containing the previous garden center went up for sale and the couple made the decision to buy it. On Aug. 7, 2002, Round Rock Garden Center officially opened to the public at 901 Sam Bass Road.
Despite not having the most auspicious start to the business, Jeff cites the original nursery going bankrupt as one of the driving factors of him deciding to open his own business.
“After realizing that as hard as I work, I could still lose my job, I decided that I was gonna always make my own luck or my own chances,” he said. “I'd rather work for myself than anybody else.”
Today, the garden center sells an assortment of products, including perennials, fruits, trees, shrubs, ground covers, annuals, cacti, succulents, herbs, vegetables, tropicals, houseplants, organic soils, organic mulches, organic fertilizers, and even pottery. It features a wide selection of indoor plants within their greenhouse, outdoor plants and even specializes in Texas Native plants.
For those new to planting and gardening, the center offers planting and delivery services in the Austin area within a 50 mile radius of the garden center. Their planting services even include bringing customers fresh soil, mulch of their choice and fertilizer to get the plants off to a healthy start.
“We are a full service garden center, so we're gonna sell anything that is going to help you do it yourself in your yard, your [outdoor] garden or your indoor garden,” Jeff said.
Because Texas experiences very unpredictable weather conditions, Jeff admits he has become a de facto weatherman for his friends after having to learn meteorology over the past 30 years. Most of their plants, minus the greenhouse ones, are Texas Natives and are meant to withstand any freezing temperatures the state might throw at them. Round Rock Garden Center will carefully monitor the weather and know when to order which kinds of plants or when to shelter certain plants depending on the forecast, with special care during the hot months.
“Summer is probably more damaging than winter would ever be here,” Jeff said.
After 20 years in the business, one of the main things the garden center is looking forward to is upgrading their current building to a new one, since it’s been standing for over 60 years. However, their overall goal, as Jeff puts it, is to beautify Round Rock and take the guessing game out of gardening.
“If you have questions, we're here to answer those questions,” he said. “What I love about this business is when our customers come into the store, they're generally in a good mood and they're getting to do something in their yard for themselves.”
The above story was produced by Community Impact's Storytelling Multi-Platform Journalist Sierra Rozen with information solely provided by the local business as part of their "sponsored content" purchase through our advertising team. Our integrity promise to our readers is to clearly identify all CI Storytelling posts so they are separate from the content decided upon, researched and written by our journalism department.
