(upbeat music) ♪ Hey ♪ ♪ Hey ♪ ♪ Hey ♪ - Welcome to "A Shot of Ag."

I'm your host, Rob Sharkey.

Hey, are you a hostaholic?

(giggles) Brother!

I know I am.

I don't even know what it means, but we're gonna find out.

Today we're talking with Molly Blogg from Princeton.

How you doing, Molly?

- Good, thank you.

- You are the CEO of Hornbaker's Garden?

- Yes.

- That's up in, well, outside of Princeton?

- Yeah.

We're about five miles southeast of Princeton.

- Okay.

Is it actually a Princeton address?

- Yeah, we are.

- Gotcha.

- Yep.

- And it is, I guess I know it 'cause I've been to it.

I'm more in that area.

But for the people in Peoria, what is Hornbaker's Garden?

- We're a destination garden center.

Started in 1987.

My parents got it started, and at this point we've planted so many trees around the property that were essentially an arboretum.

Got lots of display gardens and things like that too.

- Arboretum?

- Yeah.

Just lots of mature trees.

So we're able to show customers, drive them around and show them what trees 10, 20 plus years old might look like.

Help 'em decide what they might.

- Oh, I gotcha.

Yeah.

- What they might like.

- Any like weird trees or just the standards?

- Lots of the standards, but we carry a lot of the unusual trees as well, especially evergreens and conifers and things like that.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- So this was, your parents started it, right?

- Yeah, our parents started it, yeah.

- Okay.

So tell me how that came about.

- Well, our parents purchased some property out in the country thinking they were gonna build a house.

They purchased an old farmstead, they were gonna build a house and raise kids out in the country.

And our dad was practicing law in Princeton.

- Oh, he's a lawyer?

- Yeah, he was.

He was a lawyer practicing law in town.

And after doing that for about 13 years, when we were pretty young, decided or started thinking, how can I not put on a suit and tie and go to work every day?

- I get that.

- Yeah.

- And our mom was a teacher for a couple years and they decided that they were gonna ditch those careers and grow plants instead.

So that's kind of how the gardens got started.

- So how old were you when you realized that oh, daddy's not a lawyer anymore?

- Yeah, so our kinda their first year in business in '87, we were only about 6, 8, 10 years old.

- Mm-hmm.

- Yeah.

- It's you and your brother?

- Yeah.

So there's three of us kids.

We've got an older sister.

She's a librarian for the schools down in Bloomington-Normal.

- Nice.

- So my brother and I are involved in the business.

And yeah, are kinda second generation owners now.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- So, growing up, did you know this is what you were gonna do?

- No, not at all.

I loved growing up in the business.

When we were kids our job was, as they were growing plants and potting up perennials in the spring, our job was pot tagging all the plants, as the crews were doing that.

And our marker of success was how many rubber bands we had around our wrist from all those packets of pot tags at the end of the day type of thing.

But then, growing up there was never really any expectation or pressure put on us by our parents to be involved in the business and take it over.

They just wanted us to do what we loved and what we enjoyed.

So it took me a while to decide to come back to the business.

- Well, honestly, what better example than your dad.

I mean, it's not easy being a lawyer, right?

- Sure.

- Or becoming a lawyer.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- And then just to say, "All right, I'm gonna go grow plants."

- Right.

Yeah.

I think people thought he was a little nuts.

Yeah.

To do that.

- Do you remember that though?

I mean, were, I don't know.

If I did something like that, I assume my wife would go, maybe we should talk about this first.

And do you remember that whole transition, or were you too young?

- We were really too young to really understand, or at the time, what a major kinda life shift that was.

I think as we grew up, and at this point really appreciate, and understand what a big decision that was to let go of a career like that and jump ship and do something totally different.

Yeah.

Yeah.

- So you grew up in Princeton, went to school in Princeton?

- Yeah.

Grew up in Princeton.

- Go Tigers.

- Right there.

Go Tigers.

Grew up right there on the farm.

- Actually I'm not a fan of that school.

- Yeah?

- Yeah.

- Y'all thought a lot of yourselves, didn't ya?

- Ah, maybe.

(both laugh) - Did you go off to college?

- I did.

I decided to, I have a bachelor's in sociology.

Went to Illinois Wesleyan University down in Bloomington.

- [Rob] Oh.

What did you want to do?

- Well, I thought that I just started taking classes that I loved and I loved those sociology classes and thought I took my GREs and thought I might be headed to grad school for social work.

And at some point, kinda later in college, finally decided that I did wanna come back to the family business.

And kind of up until then, it just kinda felt like, I don't know, to stick around and be part of the family business felt like, well, am I not really pursuing what I want?

And, you know, does it feel kind of like a fallback to just stay in the family business and do something like that?

- I 100% get that.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

- And I think, in agriculture, especially farming, which probably is a little more prevalent with the next generation coming back than other businesses.

I think there's a lot of people that do that.

It's almost like if I go back to the farm, I'm almost admitting that I couldn't do anything else.

It's a kind of a mindset.

- Yeah.

- Even though it's not true.

- Right.

- I do, talking to a lot of people that are contemplating going back to a farm, that goes through their mind.

- Yeah.

Yeah, it definitely does.

Very much a similar type of thing for me.

Yeah, and finally deciding, if this is really what I wanna, I really love this, I love working with my dad and being involved in the business.

And so, and at this point it's certainly not, it's hard to run a business, you know?

So... - So your dad's still involved?

- So he's pretty well retired.

He still lives there on the property at the house and is involved to the extent he wants to be and loves being around and in the know, but he can come and go as he wants at this point.

- I think my, my dad was never happier than when he retired and he could show up to my shop at about nine o'clock in the morning, tell me what I was doing wrong, and then leave and go get coffee.

- Yeah.

We get a little of that.

- Yeah.

- He has some suggestions and input here and there about what we need to get done.

- But in his defense, I mean, I'm still, it's amazing because, being a lawyer is a great job.

And did people think he was crazy?

- I think they probably did.

- Yeah.

- A little bit, you know.

Yeah.

That's quite a shift in career choice.

- I know he's your dad, but have you really thought about, he literally followed his passion, followed his dream.

- Yeah.

Sometimes I wonder... Yeah, if I'd be brave enough, I think, to make that same type of choice for myself.

- I don't know if I would be.

- I don't know.

I don't know.

I think, yeah, I think it's pretty great that he did.

- Obviously it's worked out for you guys.

- It has.

Yeah.

- You guys are a huge success.

You go to your place and there's a lot of people there.

Hostas I think, it's a fine plant.

It's a wonderful plant.

- They're fine.

- I don't obsess over them like some of y'all.

I mean, tell me that.

What's the obsession for hostas?

- Well, at the time when they started growing perennials, Dad kinda fell in love with hostas.

He got really involved in the newly formed American Hosta Society.

There's a national society for hostas.

Yep.

Still going strong.

- Okay.

- And got real involved in that.

- I'm not a member.

And they're a shade perennial.

And he got into business at a time when there was just kinda an explosion of hosta hybridizing, coming out with new varieties all the time.

And he just thought that was a cool plant because there's varieties that range from anything from this small, little, less than a foot, less than a 12 inch clump with leaves the size of your thumbnail to hostas that get six feet wide.

- Yeah.

- And three feet tall.

And he thought, what a what a range of size in those and color and things like that.

- Yeah, I never really thought about it before now.

But hostas are like a communal plant because what do you do, it's like, oh, I'm gonna go over to my neighbors and steal half their hostas.

They split 'em.

- They do.

Yeah.

Hostas are really hardy plants, hard to kill.

You could mow 'em off and they'll probably keep coming back, And people divide 'em and share 'em.

And so when we got into business, if people had hostas, they were probably one of a few varieties, really common.

Everybody had the same ones.

And so then he started amassing a collection of hostas.

And that's really what kind of, what his niche in the industry was, was this collection of hostas.

And at the time you couldn't just mail order them from all over the place.

And so people from kinda all over the region would come looking to add to their own hosta collections.

So hence the hostaholics.

- Who came up with that?

- I have no idea.

I heard it somewhere from- - Wasn't your dad though?

- I don't think so.

- Hostaholics.

- Yeah.

- Do you have merch and everything?

- Ah no, we don't, but good idea.

- I would buy one.

- Yeah.

- Because everybody would ask what's a hostaholic.

- It'd be worth putting on a shirt.

Yeah.

- Yeah I get 10% of that idea.

- Okay.

- By the way.

- Yeah.

So we carry, there's tens of thousands of hosta varieties out there.

- That's crazy!

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- And how many acres wise do you have of hostas?

So, well, they have 40 acres, dad has 40 acres of land out there.

We figured the business only operates on about 10 acres of the property.

So we grow a number of hostages ourselves to maintain the collection that we do.

So, over the course of 38, 39 years here, we still sell over 400 varieties every year.

- Oh my gosh!

- And a number of those we grow, but we also order, there's new varieties coming out all the time, that maybe you can't propagate or are licensed or patented.

So we're ordering in new varieties all the time.

- You need to make ones where people can't split 'em, then you'll sell more.

- Yes.

Then yeah.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- That guy gets- - Well, they all keep growing.

- I get 10% of that idea too.

(both laugh) Also, trees and shrubs, flowers.

What is a destination garden center?

- Well, we are definitely not a place that you're gonna find on your way home from work.

We're, we're out in the sticks, kind of, we're people, right.

- Lowe's, you wanted to say Lowe's.

- We are not.

Yep, we're not the Lowe's or the Home Depot that you're gonna find- - You can rip on.

They're not sponsors.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

Nobody likes them.

- Great.

So yeah we say we're out in the sticks.

We get phone calls all the time.

People are somewhere out in the country trying to find us, saying, "I'm on my way to your house.

How do I find you?"

And so we're trying to figure out what country road they're on and how to turn them around and get to our- - They don't have like- - Get to our place.

I mean, most people do, their GPS.

- Could you imagines being your mom and dad before Google Maps and trying to explain?

'Cause it's not the easiest place to find.

- No, not necessarily.

Especially before our GPS on our phone.

So a lot of maps that were distributed to rest areas or local shops in Princeton.

So at least if people made it to Princeton, there were a lot of stores that regularly had people looking for us stop in and say, "Hey, I'm trying to find Hornbaker's.

How do we get out there?"

So yeah.

- Yeah.

- Come to think about like, there's a sign from Princeton to Tiskilwa, right?

There's a sign where you turn?

- Yeah.

For Hornbaker's, yeah.

- For you guys.

- There's a couple signs there.

- You were saying before the interview, you do not like Tiskilwa.

- I was not saying that.

(laughs) You're gonna get me in trouble.

- They don't buy hostas anyway.

- No.

(Rob laughs) - Okay, so besides this, do you want people to come out and it's more than just coming out to buy plants.

You want them to- - Right.

Make a day of it, half day of it, experience, that type of thing?

- Yeah, so part of that destination, we know people are coming.

Like I said, they're not gonna find us.

We're not the place you're gonna stop by on your way home and grab a plant or two.

So people are making a plan to come and they're driving, a lot of our customers are driving an hour or two to get to us.

So, we're wanting people to come out, experience the gardens, we have all the hostas that we're selling.

We also have planted down in what we call our hosta ravine, our main kinda shade garden areas so people can see what these plants are looking like when they're big and mature, which helps 'em, make that decision for what they like or don't like and what they can see in their own garden.

So then they can make those selections.

So we've got picnic tables and a gazebo and we want people to come and come and stay and sit a while and enjoy the peaceful setting that we're in.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- So our daughter went to prom and they do this thing where everybody, it's a prom, they introduce 'em, the guy and the gal, and they walk in their formals and stuff like that.

And it was at your place.

- Well, we've never had the place where they, we've never been the location where they introduce people.

We get a lot of people coming out during homecoming and prom to take pictures.

- [Rob] Then what did they have out there?

'Cause it was at your barn.

- Well, so we do have, yeah.

So I suppose at the barn we have hosted.

I suppose we have.

- [Rob] What is the barn?

- So the barn is an event center.

So about 10 years ago in 2015, we opened the barn.

So when my brother and I had both decided we were gonna get involved in the business, we started thinking about how we were gonna grow.

We had a business that supported one family, our parents and us kids.

And then, and then we have three families, my dad at the time and my brother and myself.

So how are we gonna grow?

And we'd had a number of people ask about having weddings on the property.

'Cause it was so pretty.

They wanted to have a garden ceremony type of thing.

And we thought, we'd been asked that a few times and had a couple close friends get married on the property.

And so then we started thinking, well, maybe we should put up a building and be able to host wedding receptions.

So that kind of started us brainstorming about an event center.

And about 10 years ago we opened up the barn, which primarily hosts weddings.

And then, in addition to that, we have the occasional prom or community charity event or things like that that also happen out there as well.

What's the weirdest thing you've had out there?

- For an event?

- Yeah.

- Oh, I don't know event-wise, but our coordinators certainly have stories to tell, where they're- - Of what people want?

- Yeah.

Where just even, which is just really fun to see what people have.

But at one point we had one of our coordinators, calling around trying to locate another horse because the bride was riding in on a horse and then something fell through with the horse.

And so next thing we know, she's trying to- - Broken horse.

- Yeah.

She's trying to find an a replacement.

- You probably have some standards though.

So like, if I call up and say, "Hey mean and some buddies were gonna have a cockfighting ring or something, you'd- - Probably say no.

Yeah.

- Okay.

Not that I would do that.

- Come up with a... (Molly laughs) - Hypothetically it's a- - Probably hypothetically.

- It's a hard no?

- Yeah, I would say so.

- Fine.

Okay.

No, that's fine.

That's good.

Is it just like a shed?

- It's not, no.

We called it The Barn at Hornbaker Gardens, but it's really, it's a pretty elegant, and luxurious type of barn.

So it's a brand new building.

We weren't renovating anything.

So we wanted it to look barn like and rustic with the shape of it and the, the staining and the siding of it to look like an older barn.

But inside it's heated and cooled and has chandeliers and a beautiful indoor space.

So you can have that outdoor ceremony, that garden type of setting without sacrificing, the comforts of your guests and having a nice space to enjoy a reception.

- Gotcha.

- Yeah.

- What do we got here?

- So these are some boulder animal friends of ours.

One of our more popular kinda garden decor type items that we sell have been these, especially the boulder.

It started with the boulder owls that you're holding there.

People love owls.

- Who?

- Huh?

Owls.

That's an owl.

- (laughs) Got her.

(Molly laughs) Got her.

- What?

- Who?

- Oh man.

- It's the little things in life, isn't it?

Well do you make 'em?

- We don't make 'em.

- Are the rocks from you?

- Nope.

The rocks don't come from us.

They come in like that.

So then, after owls for several years, they expanded on their line of animals.

We have cats.

This one, here's a cat.

There's little turtles.

- More like a dog.

- There's dogs too.

- This looks like a dog.

- Well, if you saw the dog, then you'd probably realize oh, this looks nothing like a dog.

- Puppy.

Little good dog.

- Little ears, yeah.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, so these are some of the favorites of some of the garden decor we have out there.

- Remember how angry Kayla, the producer, was getting?

- I know, get it just right.

- 'Cause we didn't have, - We gotta have the looking out there.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

I was glad you were there to witness it.

The abuse that I take.

- I saw it.

- From the production.

- Yeah.

Thank you.

(both snicker) Besides stuff like that, what's a kinda bread and butter thing people take away, as a tchotchke?

- As a, like a non plant?

- Yes.

- Type of item.

Well, if it's not boulder animals, like these guys, the last couple of years, one of our most popular items has been what they call sun catchers.

They're, they have kind of an acrylic disc on top, on a stake that you can press into the ground.

And it kind of reflects the light.

There's all different colors and so it's like you get kinda color in your garden without the real thing.

- Yeah.

- So, I mean, we want people to buy real plants too, but- - I got one of those at Lowe's.

- But it's fun to, yeah.

I've never seen those at Lowe's.

- I don't know.

(both laugh) Tell me about the spring workshops.

- So, in the springtime, our garden center season is only six months out of the year.

So we're open April 10th to October 10th.

And in the springtime, which is the busiest time of year, everybody's ready to get out into the gardens.

We've got workshops going on every Saturday, usually from late April through the middle of June.

Whether it's a make and take for an annuals combo container or an informational workshop about pruning or things like that we have going on.

- And the hostas, do you have workshops for those?

- Sometimes we'll do a workshop on dividing hostas, or we always do one on introducing our new plants for the year.

So we always have several new varieties of hostas we're talking about.

- Guys, you, I've divided hostas!

If I can do it, anybody can do it.

- Yeah.

Anybody can do it.

If you've got a spade, you can- - Can you, you just do- - Easily divide 'em.

- In half or can you quarter 'em, or?

- You can get lots of pieces out of one big clump if you wanted to.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

Springtime's the best time to divide those as they're just kinda poking up out of the soil.

- What is this plant leaves your place, you're like, ugh.

'Cause it's like the hardest to grow.

What comes to your mind?

- Mm.

Gosh, I don't know.

Plants that we're supposed to encourage people that it's doable and easy to do.

- [Rob] Oh, okay.

- I mean, we want everybody to be successful.

- I think a plant came to mind, but you don't want to say it.

'Cause then people will think it's hard to grow.

- There's plants, I can't think of a specific variety.

There's some that, the tricky ones are ones that, they're picky about their soil, you know?

They need to be not too wet or not too dry.

- Yeah.

- Or things like that.

Yeah.

- I think it'd be hard to do what you do because you sell a plant to a knit wit and it's like you sell 'em a cactus and then they water it every three hours and just like, what are you supposed to do?

- Yeah, watering is the, the hardest thing I think about.

And then the hardest thing for us to train staff to do, the hardest thing to learn to do, 'cause you can easily kill a plant by under watering it or overwatering it.

So yeah, it goes both ways.

- Pretty fine balance.

- Yeah.

It is.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- Do you like what you do?

- I love what I do.

- Yeah?

- Yeah, I do.

- What do you want people to know about when they come to Hornbaker's Garden?

They just see the pretty rocks and the hostas and everything.

What do you want them to know about what goes on kinda behind the scenes?

- Gosh, just that... we want people to recognize us as a place that has really great customer service.

What goes on behind the scenes is that we're a really collaborative type of business, and a family run business, really and truly, who we love what we do and a lot of our staff on hand.

We're a lot of like-minded people in terms of everybody's really loves being outdoors, working with plants, being in nature kind of thing.

And we attract customers that, gardeners are a pretty great group of people to work with as far as being in a retail business.

- Yeah?

- Gardeners are a pretty happy lot.

- Are gardeners better than hostaholics?

- One and the same.

I don't know.

Hostaholics are pretty, I mean, they're gardeners.

They love what they do.

They love their hostas.

We'll have people come that already have hundreds of varieties in their own garden.

If they're really into it- - They probably just wanna tell you about it.

- They might even have a spreadsheet with the names on- - Oh my God!

- And make sure they don't duplicate their collection- - Okay, so- - Refer back to know what they have or- - Hostaholics is a perfect word, isn't it?

- Yeah.

It works well.

It works well.

- All right.

Tell people where they can find you.

Social media, website, that type of stuff.

- Our website, HornbakerGardens.com.

We've worked on, it's got our plant catalog.

You can see lots of things that we carry, lots of information on there.

We're also also on Facebook and Instagram too.

- Okay.

No, TikTok?

- Not yet.

Not yet.

- Just afraid they're gonna take it away?

- No, just haven't had anybody venture into it yet.

There's only so much time.

(both laugh) - We didn't even get, I mean, you're married, you got two kids.

We didn't get into any of that.

- Right.

- How do you do it all?

- It's a lot.

It's a lot.

Yeah.

I'm married.

I've got three boys that are four and eight and 10, and so they're keeping us- - Oh, okay.

- They're keeping us really busy, so- - That is the, that's the sports years where you're running to everything.

- Yeah, we're just getting into the point where, yeah, we're kinda, we're a shuttle.

- [Rob] Where you're about insane.

- We're about a shuttle service, so we're just approaching that as they're getting more involved, so- - Well, good thing Princeton isn't like a real big sports town.

(Rob exhales) (Molly laughs) - There's lots to choose from.

Yeah.

It's hard to keep up.

So between work and being a mom, that pretty well covers my time these days.

- Yeah.

- Yep.

- Well, I think Molly, people should go out and check, if they haven't been to your place, they definitely need to check it.

- It's worth a visit.

Yeah.

- It's not a real long drive from Peoria, is it?

- No, it's an hour.

It's an hour drive.

- Yeah.

That's an hour.

- Yeah.

Piece of cake.

- If you're into gardening and stuff, you live in Peoria.

I mean, you've probably been around all the places in Peoria.

Might as well check somewhere new out.

- Yeah, we're pretty unique in the setting that we're in, yeah.

- Yeah.

It's a beautiful place.

Especially if you're into hostas.

- If you're into hostas, definitely worth a visit.

- And rock owls.

- And rock animals.

Yeah.

- Okay.

Molly Blogg from Princeton, CEO of Hornbaker's Garden.

Molly, thank you so much for talking with us.

- Thank you, Rob, for having me down.

- It's always a pleasure to catch up with you.

- Yes, - Everybody else- - Thanks.

- We'll catch you next time.

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