If you’ve ever found yourself on a walk through Downtown Cary, you may have spotted City Garden Design. The entire place is a haven for plant lovers, packed floor to ceiling with greenery of all shapes and sizes. We stopped by City Garden Design ourselves to speak with owner John Higdon about his background with plants and what guests can expect when they walk into the shop.
Can you describe what you guys do at City Garden Design?
As far as the store, we’ve got a huge variety of plants. We do a lot of the moss arrangements. We do a lot of air plants, which a lot of people don’t do. We do a lot of arrangements and pre-made arrangements. You can come in and get gifts, or you can bring your own pot in and we can plant it up for you! So if you have a cool thing from your dining room table, and you want it planted up, we can do that for you. Probably our most popular thing is a plant in a pot. We have a lot of different cool pots that people can pick from, so people can come in and pick out a plant and then pick out the perfect pot for it. We offer interior plant design and maintenance as well. We also have classes here, I just talked to two people this morning that wanted to do classes for their company. We do a lot of classes for individuals, but we also offer classes for team-building or holiday events. Down at Downtown Cary Park we did one of those events, and we just did one at Hearsay, which is part of The Matthews House, which was really fun.
I think a lot of our customers like coming here because we will educate them on each individual plant and how to take care of them. A lot of people come back after purchasing a plant and they’re like, “we’re doing so good with it now,” and we take pride in that!
How did you get into plant design, and what made you decide to open City Garden Design?
I got a degree in horticulture from the University of Georgia back in ‘97. I worked in commercial landscaping, and then I was a nursery manager at a garden center in Atlanta. After that I worked at a place kind of like City Garden Design that was very high-end right in Buckhead, Georgia, so I learned a lot of how to run this store from there. I worked there for about eight or nine years. We did really high-end plantscaping. We did a lot of high rises, balconies, courtyards, weddings, design, all that kind of stuff. I moved here from Atlanta 19 years ago, and I went and worked as a designer over at Garden Supply. After that I decided to get my own thing going. We opened the store about seven and a half years ago in a location down the street, and the current location is our second location.
Can you talk about some of the classes you offer?
Our two most popular classes are terrariums and the moss arrangements. Our most popular is the 9-by-9-inch and the 11-by-14 moss boxes. We put the class sign-up on our website, and people can register for them there. Each class is usually around 12 to 15 people.
It’s always a fun group of people. We offer drinks and adult beverages, and by the time they are done everyone seems to be friends! Kids can come too, it’s all family friendly. Everyone puts their own spin on it. Some people just go right at it and are done in like 30 minutes, while other people are very careful and take more time. By the end everyone has something they’ve created that they can take home.
We’ve also done some company team building where people want to bring in their own groups, and we will go to whatever location is needed. We are trying to expand a little more on what we offer. We’ve done a staghorn fern class, which is mounting a fern on a board, but the terrariums and moss boxes are our most popular, so we will continue to do those.
You mentioned you offer services beyond just having customers shop in store, such as interior plantscaping, commercial projects and consulting?
We’ve been trying to grow our interior plant maintenance accounts in general. Right now we have about six or seven. One of them is Southpoint Mall, which is my biggest account. I do the Mayton, Fernweh a hair salon in Apex, and some other office places. I’m also doing a huge 9-by-6-foot and 4-by-4-foot vertical green walls on the 14th floor of a new high-rise in Downtown Raleigh. Arhaus in Fenton has three 25-foot outdoor vertical walls that I help maintain.
I do garden consulting as well. I guess at this point, I basically know all the outdoor plants and indoor plants! If you need a plan or just need consulting, I can come out to your house, and for the consultation fee, talk to you for an hour and plan it out, and you can do it yourself. Or sometimes, I’ll order the plants, and the client will plant them.
If you were a plant, what plant would you be?
My favorite indoor plants are snake plants. They’re the greatest air purifier, and there’s so many different varieties of them. If I was an outdoor plant I’d probably be a ginkgo tree, that’s my favorite. It’s very long lived and offers a lot of benefits. To me it’s the prettiest fall color. I know where there’s a ginkgo every place I’ve lived, and I always want to go see it in the fall.
You can visit City Garden Design for yourself on 117 W. Chatham Street. For more information on City Garden Design, check out their website citygardendesign.com and follow them on Instagram and Facebook.