Linder's Garden Center, where eager gardeners loading up on annuals and too many tomato plants has been as certain a rite of spring as the arrival of robins and baseball, will close within the next few weeks after more than a century in business.
Dave Linder, company president, who grew up with his three siblings in the business begun by their grandfather as a humble celery farm in 1910, said Wednesday that the announcement has been emotional for his family, employees and customers.
"It's a sad thing," he said, adding that breaking the news to employees was one of the most difficult things he has had to do. There is no date set for closing, but it will happen after inventory is cleared — aided by 50 percent discounts that began Wednesday — at its Larpenteur Avenue store and 11-acre complex of greenhouses on St. Paul's North End.
Customers used words like "devastated" and "stunned" when learning of the decision to close the store and its satellite network of more than 50 Flower Marts.
"That's so sad. I'm shocked," said longtime Linder's customer Virginia Spaniolo as she loaded a cart of bright mums into her car. Spaniolo, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker Burnet, bought them as appreciation gifts for clients. "I'm coming back tomorrow to get another load."
Jessica Goode, a Linder's employee, fought back tears as she kept busy working at the checkout counter. "We're all just heartbroken," she said.
Linder said this year's poor spring was the final in a series of blows that the company has endured over the past five years, starting with the Great Recession. The prolonged wet and cold that delayed garden planting and landscape projects was foremost, he said. "Our business is very, very dependent on the weather. This spring really threw us a curveball."
Linder's sells 80 percent of its products in a 10-week window typically starting in April, when the last snow fades. "April was horrible, just horrible," he said. By the time the weather warmed up in June, it was time for Linder's longstanding practice of offering discount sales as the growing season progresses.