Located right in the heart of prime farming land, Eugene has plenty of locally sourced produce grown by local farmers. These local farms have a range of products like vegetables, fruit trees, gourds, chickens and all types of livestock. One farm that stands out among others is the locally and family-owned Johnson Brothers Garden Market.
Johnson Brothers Garden Market is located just north of the University of Oregon campus in Lane County. The business has been in the family for two generations and has been serving customers for almost 40 years. Johnson Brothers originally started as produce farmers, but the business has made the switch to selling plants and flowers due to customer demand. Sitting on about 10 acres of land, their Coburg location has about five acres for growing space and greenhouses and five acres for their retail sales floor.
Johnson Brothers offers gardeners a wide variety of plants including house plants, trees, shrubs, flowers, annuals, perennials and vegetable starts. Caleb Johnson, a fourth-generation farmer and owner of the garden market, said the market grows about 80-90% of the bedding plants, annuals and vegetable start-ups they sell as well as 60-70% of perennials.
“For trees and shrubs, we mostly source from a lot of growers here in the Willamette Valley, so we buy from a lot of local vendors right outside of the Eugene and Springfield area,” Johnson said. Johnson Brothers also offers soil, fertilizer and pots to help all types of gardeners with their projects.
Even with the always-changing Eugene weather and the recent damages of the ice storm in January, Johnson Brothers tend to gardener’s needs all year round. “Spring’s our busiest season, so March through June is really when we sell the most. We’ll sell a lot of colorful annuals, shrubs, and honestly everything,” Johnson said. “And then fall is a really good time to plant again, so we have a big emphasis on shrubs and trees for planting.”
In the fall, they also sell corn stalks, hay bales and pumpkins. Even though it gets slow at the garden market during the between seasons — summer and winter — they keep business running by selling blooming shrubs, fruits and house plants in the summer, and Christmas trees, poinsettias and wreaths during the holiday season.
If you are interested in learning more about gardening, the Johnson Brothers Garden Market is an ideal place to fit those needs. “We’re really about inspiring garden living and whatever their passion is,” Johnson said “We want to inspire people to be excited to be in the garden and be successful in making their space look beautiful. It is really about connecting people with gardening and it brings people together.” For more information, you can visit their website, here.
