Everyone Has a Story, Here’s Ours

Jack and Mary Varner founded Varner’s Greenhouse & Nursery in the early 1980s. They started out by growing truck crops such as strawberries, tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, and cantaloupe, on their farm, and built a fruit stand to sell the fruits and vegetables. A few years later they built a small, temporary greenhouse to germinate fruit and vegetable plants prior to planting the starts in their fields. Entrepreneurs at heart, it did not take long for Jack and Mary to think about the lost opportunity of utilizing their greenhouse only a couple weeks of the year. Before long they started seeding and germinating bedding plants under fluorescent lamps in the basement of their home and built additional single-hoop greenhouses to grow the seedlings. By the late 1990s, coinciding with the housing boom in nearby Granger, Indiana, Varner’s had expanded to approximately five acres of greenhouses, and became a one-stop retail and wholesale garden center business. Varner’s thrives today utilizing the same business principles as it has since the late 1990s. Sadly, Jack passed away in August 2019, and Mary passed away in May 2023. The beautiful plants grown at Varner’s and flourishing throughout our community are Jack and Mary’s legacy, along with their children and grandchildren. Jack and Mary live on in our hearts and memories, and the Varner family continues to own and operate Varner’s Greenhouse & Nursery.