B Brendco Garden & Greenhouse
Our story

Sixteen seasons on Bingamon Road.

A short version of a long, dirty, happy story about one grower, two acres, four greenhouses, and a lot of tomatoes.

Where it began

A folding table, a coffee can, and a stack of paper bags.

Cruz Finley's grandmother, Elsie, used to sell tomato starts at the end of her driveway every May. She kept the money in a Folgers can on the porch and never once counted it. Cruz spent every Saturday of his childhood helping her water flats and write little hand-lettered labels.

When Elsie passed in 2008, Cruz took the small inheritance and leased two acres on Bingamon Road from a neighbor who'd let his hayfield go fallow. He put up a single hoop house in March of 2009, named the place after the family's old beagle "Brenda," and opened the gate that April with about forty trays of tomatoes and a hand-painted sign.

Wooden seedling flats in spring
A few small milestones

How the greenhouse grew

2009

Single 14×40 hoop house. Forty trays of tomatoes. The first season ends with $3,200 in the coffee can and a long list of neighbors asking for next year.

2012

Second greenhouse added. Cruz hires his first part-time help — Maggie, who still runs the cash register on Saturdays.

2015

Brendco joins the Ohio Nursery & Landscape Association. Bulk mulch and topsoil delivery starts that fall.

2018

Two more greenhouses, a small office, a proper gravel parking lot. The folding table stays right where it always was.

2021

The Saturday workshop series begins. The first session — winter sowing — sells out in three days.

2024

A dedicated propagation house comes online. We start saving our own tomato, pepper, and bean seed and offering it to neighbors at cost.

Hands holding a small green seedling
How we work

Patient, local, and a little bit stubborn.

We propagate most of our perennials and almost all of our annuals in-house. The rest we source from three regional growers we've known for years — a hosta farm in Madison, a small orchard near Geneva, and a perennial specialist outside Painesville.

We don't sell anything we wouldn't put in our own yard. That sounds like a slogan, but it's mostly a confession — Cruz's front border has every plant we carry, and if something doesn't make it through a Lake Erie winter at his place, it doesn't make it onto the bench at ours.

  • Zero neonicotinoid pesticides on any plant we grow.
  • Compostable pots on roughly 60% of our annuals (and growing).
  • Rainwater catchment supplies most of our summer irrigation.
  • One-year guarantee on every perennial, shrub, and tree we plant for you.
The crew

A small bench, a deep one

Cruz Finley

Owner, head grower, designer, and the guy who answers the phone before 7am. Sixteen years on this dirt.

Maggie Vorhees

Saturday register, Sunday plant whisperer, and the unofficial encyclopedia for anything with a Latin name.

The Install Crew

Travis and Lee — two solid guys with two solid trucks. They plant what we sell and they don't leave a mess.