Above) Top L-R, Ashley Stratton, Charlie Stratton, Dan Stratton, Susie Stratton and Steve Stratton. Below) Steve Stratton watering flowers on Bluffton's Main Street.
By Liz Gordon-Hancock
Stratton Greenhouses celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. Owners Steve and Susie Stratton have continually reinvented the business over the years to provide beauty and art in plant form to their customers and surrounding communities.
Their business tagline is “serving your growing needs since 1949” but the motivation behind their business is really promoting the benefits of beauty and plants. “We don’t do it for us,” said Susie, “we grow for the beauty that it can bring to your life, to the community’s life.” She added “I feel like we are, in a sense, the world’s decorator.”
The business began back in 1949 when Steve’s father, James Stratton, started growing hothouse tomatoes on the family farm. His son, Steve, essentially grew up “in a bushel basket” in the greenhouse, said Susie. But by the ‘70s, hydroponics shut down the greenhouse tomato industry. This is when Steve quit his teaching job to help his father reinvent the business to grow bedding plants and poinsettias.
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As Steve recounts “We worked many hours, but invested everything we could back into the business and doubled the size from one half acre to one acre by the summer of 1980 and had established a customer base that would sustain us for 25 years.” What started with just 5,000 poinsettias expanded to 75,000 within a couple years, including supplying to big box stores such as K-mart and Wal-mart. Susie described filling football fields with flats of flowers to sell for fundraisers from the 80s onward.
Steve and Susie met in the fall of 1976 as she was working at Bluffton College (now Bluffton University) and, by April 1977, they were married. If Steve is the grower, then Susie, with her background in art and design, is the curator.
Rising energy costs, recessions and market shifts continued to force Stratton Greenhouses to keep pivoting their focus and products. Looking back over the years, Susie said the greenhouse has always been reinventing itself.
They experienced lots of lean years. Susie recalled lots of early mornings and “falling into bed without dinner,” or only heating one room of the house to make ends meet. “When things were tight, I packed up our van every single Saturday morning at 4 a.m. and went to farmers markets just for advertising, to sell our wares… get the word out,” which she kept up for over three years just to generate the revenue. But through it all, she declared “it’s all been fun.” As Steve often says: “follow the path.”
In the early 2000s, the business had to pivot again and get out of the wholesale market, refocusing on their retail, and taking on comprehensive landscaping services. By May of each year, the greenhouse has multiple college student crews all over the place installing landscaping. Stratton’s currently does landscaping for Bluffton University and Ohio Northern University campuses, alongside many personal properties in the area.
Bluffton has Stratton Greenhouses to thank for the flower pots and hanging baskets that populate our downtown in the warmer months. Steve and Susie started this tradition back in 2007 when they just decided to put 12 pots along Main Street, whether they had permission or not. This was just after the flood in August and the pots became a signal of hope to many in the community. Unbeknownst to many, Stratton Greenhouses supplied the flower pots for years, adding a few more every year, out of pocket. When the cost became prohibitive, rather than give up, Strattons offered locals the chance to sponsor a flower pot, and Bluffton’s Beautification plan was born in 2011. They had 60 pots sponsored that first year. At its peak, they were supplying and watering 90 flower pots, in addition to the downtown alley planters.
“We love working with downtowns and communities to make them more vital and I think that’s what drives us,” said Susie. To date, Stratton Greenhouses supplies downtown floral beautification for Bluffton, Ada, downtown Lima, Mount Blanchard and Whitehouse, Ohio.
Susie would be the first to say that none of this would be possible without her dedicated employees. “Many employees have been with us for 30-45 years,” said Susie. Not to mention the hundreds of high school students who had their first job at Stratton Greenhouses.
In addition to the garden center, Susie also owns Roots by Strattons, at 111 S. Main St. Interestingly, this is not the first storefront Susie has operated in downtown Bluffton. Back in 1977, she opened up the first houseplant store called Plants N Things in what is now Shirley's Gourmet Popcorn Co. She chose to close the shop to work full-time in the greenhouses a few years later, but started The Country Peddler, a gift shop and retail outlet, in 1979. Eventually, The Country Peddler merged with Strattons Greenhouse onsite to become the meld of plants and pots and things that customers know today.
But Susie always wanted to have an outlet store downtown again. When you visit Roots by Strattons, you can clearly see Susie’s art and design background at play. In fact, Susie said “Roots by Strattons has become a billboard for what we do.”
The Strattons were intimately involved in the design and fulfillment of the town’s entrance sign on Bentley Road, and continue to take part in its upkeep.
With Stratton Greenhouses, the family has always had to be “all in.” Growing up, Steve and Susie’s sons, Daniel, Jeff and David, got off the school bus and went to work. This past year, Dan officially joined the business. To date, there are multiple family members involved in the business. Dan’s wife, Ashley currently manages the Roots by Stratton store. Jeff and his wife Crystal often volunteer for maintenance projects. Over the years, David has engineered and built many parts of greenhouse, including the retail entrance and pergola. And even the grandkids Teddy, Caroline, Charlie, Katie and Lucy pitch in.
As their website states “Today Stratton Greenhouses offer a complete garden center experience, comprehensive landscape design and installation services, community beautification programs, fundraising possibilities, a business enhancement program, and more.”
