After one last “spring surge” of seven-day work weeks through peak gardening season, Mike Abbott is retiring. June 30 will be the last day for Abbott’s Landscape Nursery, which Mike and his wife Sue have operated since 1985 on twenty acres at 2781 Scio Church Rd.
Abbott recalls that it felt “sort of like winning the lottery to find a piece of property that we could afford this close to Ann Arbor.”
He tells the Observer they’re in a good position to retire and enjoy more time with their seven grandchildren. They’d downscaled somewhat in recent years—Abbott’s once had four landscaping crews as well—but ultimately opted to close the nursery and hold onto the property, which includes three barns and a farmhouse, all of considerable vintage.
“We’re still going to talk to people about it,” Abbott says, but selling or leasing is “not a priority for us.” After all, he readily recalls the good fortune he felt in buying the improved portion of a much larger but abandoned old farm, “sort of like winning the lottery to find a piece of property that we could afford this close to Ann Arbor.”
The Michigan State landscape architecture grad had worked for several nurseries before starting his own in 1982 on Dhu Varren Rd. Three years later the Abbotts bought what would later become their homestead for nine years as well, a quarter-mile from the Ann Arbor city limits in Lodi Twp., just west of the iconic “M Go Blue” barn.
The first two consultants advised tearing down two of the barns, one dating to the 1860s. “The third one told me how I could keep them, and so that was the one we listened to,” Abbott recounts.
The seasonal garden center was busy over the years, even with the challenging emergence of big box stores selling plants. Abbott’s continued to offer more common boxwood or yews, but also carried as many as fifty-five varieties of Japanese maples and thirty-five different hydrangeas.
“By diversifying and giving people lots of options, I think that’s what was important to keep us going strong,” he notes, adding that many gardeners who became devoted customers over the years would join his largely seasonal staff.
“We leave a lot of customer/friends behind,” he reflects fondly. “They’ve been coming here, some of them, for as long as we’ve been in business.”
Abbott’s Landscape Nursery, 2781 Scio Church Rd. (734) 665–8733. Mon.–Sat. 9 a.m.–5 p.m., Sun. 11 a.m.–4 p.m. Closing June 30.
