Business Feature: Rainbow Gardens

Local Garden Feature

RAINBOW GARDENS

HIGHLIGHTS FROM GARDOPIA GARDEN’S PODCAST GROWING OUR FUTURE WITH URBAN AGRICULTURAL ENTHUSIASTS, STEPHEN LUCKE AND BRANDON KIRBY

Rainbow Gardens, the 2021 winner of the Best Nursery in Gardopia Gardens’ Gala Awards, is one of San Antonio’s leading garden centers. Boasting two beautiful locations, Rainbow Gardens sells fruit trees, plants, seeds, fertilizer, pots, and anything else you need to grow healthy crops or house plants. Gardopia’s Stephen Lucke spoke with Rainbow Gardens’ Brandon Kirby to learn about the nursery and its sustainability and education efforts. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

SL: How did you get into gardening?

BK: I grew up on a farm on the Balcones Escarpment between Boerne and San Antonio. It was a satellite growing operation for Rainbow Gardens, our family business. I was raised with the “hippie mentality” of being good stewards of our environment. I would take long nature walks with my dad and he would point out all the different plants and give the Latin names and I would basically roll my eyes. As I got older, though, I realized that I really love plants and the environment and I got jazzed about it. SL: I didn't get into gardening until I was older either, but I was also on a farm from a very young age. I think it’s interesting to see how and why people gravitate toward nature and the garden. How did Rainbow Gardens get

started?

BK: Rainbow Gardens began as a small garden center in Harmony Hills in 1976. My father Frank partnered with George Beer who was a Depression-era businessman and something of a mentor. George was savvy. He had seen the economy go up and down. They had a heck of a time at first and left that location two years later for Hollywood Park Gardens Center near Thousand Oaks and 281.The name changed to Rainbow Gardens in 1980, and we opened a second location on Bandera Road in 1985. There was a big houseplant boom and a renaissance in gardening in the 70s; people were conscious of the earth. A lot of garden centers were started around then. I think there were as many as 35 in San Antonio at the time. But they fell out of favor in the 80s and 90s, into the 2000s. Nobody was talking about gardening.

SL: It's so interesting. There used to be so many garden centers. Now, maybe there's 10 or 15 prominent ones. I hope that we're on an increase again.

Everytime I go to Rainbow Gardens, it's packed.

BK: I stepped into the industry right before the pandemic started. It was sleepy in 2018 and 2019, and then things suddenly changed.We’ve seen a ton of new people interested in gardening. I think, given the circumstances of the pandemic and how resiliency is on our minds, a lot of people have a renewed interest in plants. With people stuck at home, they were looking for a way to connect with nature. People found you could bring plants into your home and create your own oasis, maybe in your backyard, if you had one, or in the sunniest window in your apartment. Plants are like pets, but not as demanding. These “new” gardeners are all learning, wanting to know, “How do I grow vegetables here?” “What fruit trees work here?” “What kind of flowers can I bring in?” People have also taken a greater interest in the local ecosystem. “How do I bring butterflies or bees to my yard?” “What plants are good for birds?” It’s super cool to see the community of San Antonio rally around this.

SL: You're right about the pandemic. We got so many calls for gardens. It's a silver lining. We needed a wake up call about our health and our environment. We're nowhere near where we need to be but we have the opportunity in this time to be that change.

You mentioned resiliency gardens. What is a resiliency garden?

BK: When the pandemic first began, food scarcity was on everybody's minds. If you walked into the local grocer, you saw empty aisles, and it wasn't just fresh food that was gone but also shelf-stable food. People were panicking and realizing how fragile our supply chain is and seeing that they relied on being able to go to the store and buy what they needed. We saw that breakdown.

My marketing team and I asked how we could increase awareness of food resiliency. We took the idea of the Victory Gardens that were promoted during World War I and II. Millions of Americans helped the war effort by turning front yards, backyards,

schoolyards, and vacant lots into vegetable gardens to avoid food shortages. People were encouraged to plant beans, squash, tomatoes and food you could can for the winter. Now we were fighting our own good fight against this pandemic. We wanted to encourage people to be more resilient so we went to local media and talked about it. I think the concept of self-sufficiency and sustainability has grown through the pandemic. Sustainability doesn't mean turning your front yard into a huge garden. It means planting a couple fruit trees or having a couple tomato plants and pots in your backyard to help supplement your food supply and to feed yourself nutritious food that our bodies crave.

SL: We're still in the pandemic and we're also in a climate crisis. A lot of people can feel depressed or anxious about what they can do. Gardening is a great activity to take as a small step. It's not going to save the world, but if everybody produced a percentage of their food then we could really start to make a big cultural change. Your educational programs are helping with that. Tell us what you’re doing.

BK: When I first started, I realized, we've got a great organization with lots of intelligent people who know gardening. But for a lot of people gardening is still a mystery. Our vision is to get the information out of our heads and into the heads of our community members. We started a blog to write down as much information as we could. The intent was hyper-local in how to be successful in a San Antonio garden. “Garden” being a broad term meaning annual beds, perennials, trees and shrubs, or maybe house plants.

GARDENING IS WHATEVER YOU WANT IT TO BE - ANYTHING WITH ROOTS.

From the blogs, we started doing more Facebook-type posts–one-minute videos and quick reads. Recently, we got our video program off the ground and are doing extended videos for more in-depth knowledge. We're continuing our in-person seminar program as well, though we’ve realized that just because you can't attend in person doesn't mean that you shouldn't have access to that knowledge so we're working on transcribing those classes to blogs or videos.

We're also creating an augmented customer service program. You can always ask us a question and we’ll answer it to the best of our abilities. But we’re also sticking with the QR codes that the pandemic got people accustomed to. We're taking our knowledge and gardening guides and condensing that information for access through QR codes in the nursery. If you're standing in our tree yard and you want to know how to plant a tree but you don't see anybody to ask, there's a QR code you can take a picture of. You get your question answered, and at the same time, we're reducing paper and being conscious of the environment. You can take this digital guide home and share it with your friends or family creating a digital rather than a physical footprint. SL: I love it, man! You are adapting and evolving. You started Rainbow Gardens and nearly 50 years later you’re still staying up with the times. You mentioned hyper-localism.

Why is it important to have garden centers with this knowledge?

BK: It's really important to educate our customers and the community about what actually grows here and what doesn't. San Antonio encompasses three climate zones. North of town, you might be in a completely different zone than you are south of town. and within those zones, we have microclimates. Your neighbor might be able to grow a cool tropical hibiscus on the front porch but you can’t because of the orientation of the sun. I have a friend in King William who has a beautiful citrus tree and an avocado tree right there in downtown. Meanwhile, I can't grow those north of town. There's not a one-size-fits-all solution. You have to be hyperlocal and aware of which plants will or will not grow in your yard. We try to educate every customer and to figure out what they are looking for and whether that's actually going to work for them.

SL: Y'all are doing some great work. Is there anything

else you'd like to highlight?

BK: The city of San Antonio has been great, sponsoring programs to facilitate greener spaces, and we're really proud to be a part of that. We've got a city that supports pollinator gardening. and SAWS WaterSaver coupons for drought-resistant plants help alleviate some of the water stress on the land. We’re committed to the community and want to empower individuals to work with organizations like Gardopia Gardens to alleviate food insecurity and bring knowledge to local schools. San Antonio is growing quickly and we've got a great opportunity to put beautiful plants in our yards to really make San Antonio a green city and a model for other cities.

You can find tons of gardening information through our website, blog posts, Facebook, Instagram and on our YouTube channel as well as everything that is happening at Rainbow Gardens. But I recommend you just stop in to say hello and to take a walk to connect with nature. It’s like a park here. We're gearing up for spring right now and unloading trucks as we speak. We've got over 5,000 roses coming in late March when you can smell the scent of rose wafting through the air.

Its hard to have a bad day at the garden center.

Rainbow Gardens has two locations.

They are open Monday through Saturday from 9 to 5; and Sundays from 10 to 5.

8516 Bandera Road, 210-680-2395

2585 Thousand Oaks210-494-6131.

www.rainbowgardens.biz