Home Depot Closes Landscape Stores

By Greenhouse Grower staff|September 26, 2007

The Home Depot Landscape Supply concept is no more. The company announced it will close 11 of the landscape stores in Atlanta and Dallas/Ft. Worth later this year.

The Landscape Supply concept first opened in 2002 with the aim of catering to landscape professionals and do-it-yourself gardeners with live goods, tools, chemicals and irrigation equipment. Under new Chairman and Chief Executive Frank Blake, many of the retailer’s store concepts have been under review, however. A spokesman for Home Depot said there are no further plans to expand the Landscape Supply concept, and that its resources could be shifted back to the company’s core retail warehouses.

We asked Bob Jacobson, industry consultant and former Home Depot senior director of outside garden, for his take on the situation.

“I was part of this from the beginning and I back their decision,” he says. “I think from what I hear it is more of a philosophical issue than financial. The dollars [contributed] by the 11 stores were just a fraction of Home Depot’s total volume of $92 billion. Home Depot wants to really concentrate on the traditional orange box and back away from outside business.”