GILMORE CITY – The family-owned Gilmore Garden Center in Gilmore City offers services that draw customers from more than 100 miles away.

“It’s nice that you can still have a greenhouse locally in the area,” said Pat Schall, an owner of the Gilmore Garden Center.

The Gilmore Garden Center offers landscaping, lawn care, trees, shrubs and other plants. During the winter, it has Christmas trees and wreaths.

But Schall said there some things that make the Gilmore Garden Center different than most others.

It has a large greenhouse that houses pots for its customers.

“I love the thing that we do that the box stores can’t do,” she said. “We have an 18-by-54 square-foot greenhouse that we only use to do people’s pots up. If a customer comes in with a pot, we plant it, we fertilize it, and we take care of it.”

Those pots are then ready for the customer to take home about mid-May, she said.

Last year, the Gilmore City Garden Center filled more than 450 pots. Schall said that some people will bring in 10 or more pots.

“We’ll ask people how they want it designed, or we’ll design it for them,” she said. “We work one on one with customers.”

That’s one of the things that make the Gilmore Garden Center unique, she said.

The Garden Center will also let customers tag pots or plants that they want, then let them come back later and pick them up and pay.

“We have people that come in and pick out,” she said. “We had a lady call and picked out five baskets and we tagged them for her.”

While offering services like this, the business also helps around Gilmore City.

The Garden Center partnered with the Gilmore City Garden Club and helped its members prepare the large flower pots that are around Gilmore City.

“We help them do up their pots, we help them in planting and help them in their pots on Main Street,” she said. “There’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 great big pots.”

Every plant at the Gilmore City Garden Center is grown locally. Schall said the seeds are planted in February.

“It’s not brought in from somewhere else,” she said. “It’s actually grown in Gilmore City.”

Schall has years of experience with garden centers. She previously worked at a greenhouse in Rolfe and at the former Eddie’s Greenhouse in Fort Dodge.

Schall operates the small business alongside her son, Jason Schall, who graduated from Iowa State University in 2008 with a degree in horticulture.

“He can sit down and create about anything,” Pat Schall said. “He’s got that natural ability to do that.”

Jason Schall said he enjoys creating landscapes and designs for customers.

“I grew up that way,” he said. “I enjoy the plants and just creating the designs and landscapes for people.”