Groovy Plants Ranch
We’ve been focusing on our garden with the final spring frost behind us. This is the first time we’ve had our garden, as we used to have gardens at our parent’s house growing up. We’ve started planting but needed a few more plants to add to our collection. We visited The Groovy Plants Ranch in Marengo, Ohio, to find these additional plants. Two years ago, we filled our first apartment with plants from The Ranch, so it only seemed fitting to return to it for our first house.
In the past two years, Groovy Plants Ranch has expanded so much that we had to do a full tour of everything again before making our plant choices. After parking in their expanded lot, we went into the first shop, which used to be the local schoolhouse and now houses various seeds and garden accessories. After looking around the historical school, we checked out their immense pot collection, which includes pots of all sizes, colors, and shapes. At their potting area, you can choose a pot, fill it with dirt, and plant your preferred specimen right there.
The Groovy Plant Ranch offers a wide variety of plant types. We picked up a few more herbs for our collection and mostly perused the indoor varieties. However, they also have several rows of outdoor plants. One of our favorite rows to walk down was the spikey and durable varieties. They have several plants we had never seen at our local shops and have even started creating their own! All of this is made possible by the team’s years of experience at Groovy Plant Ranch.
The draw of the variety is a significant reason why we go. However, another reason is the fun and whimsical space they have created. They wanted to create a magical place; if you visit, you can see the care that made it happen. An additional storefront with local vendors stationed inside sells handcrafted goods. Then, murals, unique signs, and their groovy plant van are nestled around the property. We had the honor of watching the owner, Jared, plant his annual plants on top of the van. We asked him about the process, and he told us how he plants depending on where the van will reside that year and that it’s his tradition to do it after the last frost of spring.
Jared and his wife, Liz, have been in the plant business for years. They started when Jared was just working at a plant store and began growing and selling his own succulents at farmers’ markets. By 2016, Jared and Liz had packed up their lives to come to Marengo and finally realized their vision of a magical ranch. Now, they live there with their two girls and continue pouring love into plants so that they can be appreciated by the rest of us.
Pricing is always a point of interest, right? We compared the prices of the basil we bought and a large potted plant to the prices at our local supermarket. They were exactly the same, and the potted plant from the supermarket was not nearly as beautiful and luscious as the one from the Ranch!
What are your favorite plants? Do you have a black thumb like me and can only grow succulents? Or are you like Josh, and can you bring a plant back from the brink of death?
