Barnes Nursery was located in Huron, OH. It is a family owned and operated business. The majority of the family and college graduate employees attended school here at OSU. They are a retail nursery with a landscaping design, installation, and maintenance division. They also have a large variety of indoor plants and some annuals and perennials.
Their retail yard showed that they sold both container and B&B plants. They had a showcase water garden and some planters with a rock garden specialty. As I walked through their yard I looked at some of the prices for their plants. They seemed to be on the relatively high side.
Barnes Nursery was also experimenting with a large investment in a soil composting facility. They had a separate area set aside to deal with these customers. They receive organic wastes from landscaping companies, construction companies, and even Cedar Point. They take these biodegradable waste products and run them through a soil composting program.
This program begins by receiving and weighing the waste. It is then transferred to a large grinder that takes the waste and makes it into smaller more easily degraded material. It is then lined out in long rows about four feet high and it is up to nature to do its' job. The temperatures in these rows is often very hot and therefore it must be monitored and it must be turned with a large piece of machinery that takes what is on the bottom and moves it to the top. This waste will sit there for between 8-12 weeks until it can be resold for soil and soil building amendments.
Barnes Nursery has been a successful family business for 3 generations and their continual growth has shown that they hope to be delivering these goods and services to their clients for further generations.