Connecticut Garden Center Closes After 82 Years
Meriden, Connecticut’s Kogut Florist & Garden Center has closed its doors and its landscaping and plowing operations after family members decided the 82-year-old business could no longer remain profitable in the unstable floral industry.
“It’s been an ongoing discussion,” Dana Kogut-Wright said. “There were many factors. We are a victim of the economy.” A wholesale operation owned by members of the Kogut family will remain in business, reports Mary Ellen Godin. On the verge of becoming a fourth-generation retail and greenhouse operation, a decade of diminishing sales came to an official end on Sunday.
Godin notes, “Kogut-Wright said people are no longer making an extra trip to the florist, instead shopping for fresh flowers at grocery stores or over the Internet. Funeral sales have dropped off significantly and people are buying plants at big-box stores. This year’s largely snowless winter left the company’s plowing business with no reserves to offset the decreased sales.”
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