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McIntire’s Garden Center • Georgetown

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Written by Katie Gutierrez Friday, 07 September 2007

Business still blooming at 32-year-old nursery

Owner Mark Ney greets his customers with a warm smile — and often by name — at McIntire’s Garden Center in Georgetown. This should come as no surprise. After all, he’s known many of them for half of his life.

“We’ve had many, many of our customers for 20, even 30 years,” Ney said. “But we always love getting new ones, and we do, often from surrounding areas like Hutto, Round Rock and Salado.”

Ney attributes the company’s success in customer retention to finding its niche: offering a wide variety of plants and garden products, while specializing in native Texas plants, flowers and trees.

Visitors walking through the deceptively large garden center can choose from dozens of oak and pecan trees, vibrant redbuds and other fruit trees before moving on to the splashes of color that are McIntire’s flower offerings.

From tiger lilies and trumpet vines to bougainvilleas and roses, Ney ensures that McIntire’s offers the widest selection around of perennials, shrubbery, pond plants and water lilies. Customers also enjoy McIntire’s eclectic collection of standalone fountains and statues. They have their pick of cherubs, cheery piglets, colorful cowboy boots, pottery and more.

Of course, a certain family business flavor doesn’t hurt, either.

Ney’s mother, Ruby McIntire, founded McIntire’s Garden Center in 1976. The forward-thinking McIntire, who sold real estate in Austin for about 10 years, had always cultivated a love of plants, so launching McIntire’s seemed like a natural choice.

McIntire also decided to forgo starting the business in Austin in favor of moving somewhere in the direction of the city’s growth — north, to Georgetown.

In its more than three decades of existence, McIntire’s has seen its share of changes. Ney would know, since he has worked there since its inception and, in 1998, purchased the majority interest of the company.

“We used to do a lot of commercial landscaping — hospitals, businesses,” Ney said. “But it just gets to be too much sometimes, so we shifted our focus to retail.”

Streamlining the company’s offerings seems to be working. In the spring, which is high season, Ney said that the garden center is filled “wall to wall” with customers. At this time of year, customers visit McIntire’s for its selection of vegetables for fall gardens; tomatoes and peppers will soon give way to lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower.

While she may not get her hands dirty, the store’s founder and original plant lover, Ruby McIntire, still keeps the books, Ney said with a smile.

McIntire’s best sellers by season