The Potting Shed to hold open house

Cassi Lapp/The Weekly Vista The Potting Shed owner Scott Metz is busy getting the garden center ready for this year’s spring open house in its new location on McNelly Road in Bentonville. The open house will be held two weekends this month, April 19 and 20 and April 26 and 27.
Cassi Lapp/The Weekly Vista The Potting Shed owner Scott Metz is busy getting the garden center ready for this year’s spring open house in its new location on McNelly Road in Bentonville. The open house will be held two weekends this month, April 19 and 20 and April 26 and 27.

Scott Metz loves plants.

He feels the need to "put stuff in the ground," he said.

The Potting Shed will hold a spring open house Saturday, April 19 and Sunday, April 20 and again the following weekend, Saturday, April 26 and Sunday, April 27.

Refreshments will be served and discounts and give-aways will be offered.

The Potting Shed offers a full selection of shrubs and trees requiring both shade and sun, as well as flowers, annuals in the greenhouse and a full selection of garden vegetables and herbs.

The garden center is located at 8542 W. McNelly Road in Bentonville. Seasonal hours are from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. Call the store at 479-271-9200.

Metz is the owner of The Potting Shed, which took over operation of the nursery on Benton County Road 40 last year. It was formerly From the Ground Up.

Metz ran his nursery in Springdale for two years, after operating a garden center in Pea Ridge before that. He moved to the area from Chicago 12 years ago, and has a degree in horticulture from Ohio State University.

"There is something rewarding about planting a seed and seeing it through all the way to a flower," he said.

The Potting Shed offers "botanical embellishments for your home," Metz said. It's not the basic garden center that sells only the basic trees and shrubs, he added.

Not only does he offer his customers high quality, healthy plants, he said, but also it's knowledge that planters and gardeners should come to him for.

Metz's first job in high school was at a family-owned garden center in a small town, and he's been in the business for nearly 30 years.

Customer service is the most important aspect of running a garden center that he has picked up over the years. The second most important: Proper watering of plants.

For those with no idea or plan of what they want their garden to become, Metz offers home visits to help.

Looking at available sun and shade, he can offer ideas on what to put in the ground and where.

That aspect of knowledgeable customer service is slowly fading away in today's retail world, he said.

Planters often make mistakes, he said, such as planting too early and then having those plants suffer frost exposure. Then they never want to do it again. It's important to have the right information when it comes to gardening, he said.

It is too early to plant right now, he stressed.

"The average frost date is April 15," he added, which means that is a guess by weather officials of when the last freeze of the year will be. Last year, however, a record-setting snow fell in northwest Arkansas the first weekend in May.

The weather in the northwest Arkansas area is one of the biggest obstacles when it comes to planting, Metz said. Another is a "ground full of rocks."

The secret, according to Metz, is raised beds. Or, he also suggests one can grow anything in a pot. A growing trend, he added, is incorporating a vegetable garden into part of a flower bed.

Not being from the area originally, Metz has had to learn the ways of the land here.

One thing he has learned to deal with is the prominent growth of Bermuda grass, which can have a negative effect on gardens.

Metz takes pride in the plants he grows and takes care of for his customers, and wants to see success for those who purchase them.

He hand picks everything he buys for the nursery, including traveling to a grower in Oklahoma to inspect shrubs before buying them.

Metz likes anything that is pretty, unique or unusual looking. Last year, he stocked a plant called cat whiskers, as the plant had long white tendrils resembling whiskers.

His most unique item he stocks is probably olive trees, he said. But along with plants and flowers, inside the store shoppers can find anything from handmade gardening hats to birdbaths to iron arbors and ornamental items for the garden.

Everything at The Potting Shed is done organically, including fertilizer, Metz said.

A farmer's market will be held in the parking lot on Saturdays. Over the winter, a group held the market in the greenhouse, but that group will be moving to the Bentonville Square starting April 26. A new group of vendors will set up for the spring and summer market.

Metz has offered his lot for those vendors that are turned away from the Bentonville farmers' market.

When the weather chills and gardening season ends in November, the store will be converted to a Christmas shop, he said, his second favorite thing.

General News on 04/16/2014