Meet the Garden Centers Powering E-Commerce Connect™: Inside the Growth of Online Plant Sales for Independent Retailers

Since launching in Fall 2025, E-Commerce Connect has grown from an idea into a rapidly expanding network of independent garden centers building real momentum in online plant sales. What started with a handful of early adopters has now grown to more than 120 garden centers across the country—each one approaching e-commerce in a way that fits their business, not the other way around.

This isn’t growth driven by noise or hype. It’s coming from results.

Take Smitty's Lawn & Landscape & Down to Earth Garden Center. These are just a few of the garden centers using E-Commerce Connect to expand how they sell—without changing the core of how they operate. They’re not abandoning their stores. They’re extending them.

Meet the team at Smitty's Garden Center in Fort Dodge, Iowa.

Each of these businesses looks different on the surface. Different regions. Different customers. Different product mixes. But they’re solving the same problem: how to capture online demand for plants, gardening products, and outdoor living—without adding more inventory, more labor, or more operational pressure.

That’s where the E-Commerce Connect program takes hold...

E-Commerce Connect gives garden centers a way to build an online plant store using platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce, while connecting directly to supplier catalogs that extend their product offering far beyond what’s in-store through our program. When a customer places an order, the supplier fulfills it. The garden center remains the seller of record, controls the pricing, and owns the customer relationship from start to finish.

It’s a structure that aligns with how garden centers actually operate—and that’s why adoption has accelerated to now over 120+ garden centers!

The growth since Fall 2025 hasn’t come from forcing change. It’s come from removing friction. Garden centers are able to start small, test what works, and build from there. Some begin with a single supplier or category. Others expand quickly once they see traction. There’s no single path, and that’s part of the strength.

More importantly, it’s working quietly in the background of their existing business. Orders come in from outside their local market. Sales are captured that would have otherwise been lost. Customers find them online in ways that weren’t possible before.

Down to Earth Garden Center, A destination garden center with landscaping services, growing facility, a cafe, men and women's boutique and a newly built greenhouse with houseplants!

This is where the conversation around “garden center e-commerce” starts to change.

It’s no longer about whether independent garden centers can compete online. They already are. The difference is how they’re doing it—through connected systems, supplier partnerships, and a model that allows them to scale without taking on unnecessary risk.

For garden centers like Smitty’s & Down to Earth, this isn’t a side project. It’s becoming a steady extension of their retail business. Not replacing foot traffic, but complementing it. Not adding complexity, but capturing opportunity.

And with more than 120 garden centers now part of the network, the acceleration is clear. As more suppliers join and more retailers connect, the ecosystem continues to strengthen. Product availability expands. Reach increases. The model becomes more valuable for everyone involved, including suppliers.

E-Commerce Connect wasn’t built to turn garden centers into something they’re not. It was built to give them access to something they didn’t have—a way to participate in online plant sales at scale, on their terms.

That’s what’s driving the growth. And it’s just getting started...