Logan’s Garden Shop has found a new Raleigh home, not far from the current one
Logan’s Garden Shop, which has sold plants and other supplies from the former Seaboard railroad station downtown for 33 years, will relocate to a new home at the State Farmers Market early next year.
Logan’s will move in to the octagonal building and greenhouse next to the Farmers Market Restaurant. It will be a homecoming of sorts for the company, which opened in 1965 in the old State Farmers Market off Capital Boulevard north of downtown before moving to Seaboard Station in 1991.
The company would likely have stayed at Seaboard had the area around the old station not been redeveloped with mid-rise apartment buildings, says Joshua Logan, the third generation owner and CEO. A garden center, with customers and suppliers coming and going, was no longer a good fit.
But the farmers market offers several advantages, Logan said, including better access to Interstate 40 and a more compact layout not dictated by the shape of a train station.
“We believe that this move is the right move for our business,” he said. “It really feels like a match made in heaven honestly. We’re kind of returning to our roots at the farmers market.”
Logan’s will remain open at Seaboard through the end of this year, then expects to close for two weeks while it moves inventory and prepares to reopen in January 2025.
The farmers market is about three miles from Seaboard Station, close enough for long-time Logan’s customers but next to the highway where it may draw new ones, Logan said. The mix of produce and food vendors and restaurants at the market makes it a destination, the way Seaboard once was.
Growers already sell plants at the farmers market from spring through fall. Logan says with Wake County growing so rapidly, he’s not concerned about the competition.
“There’s more than enough business for everybody,” he said.
Logan’s has signed a 10-year lease with the state, with two 10-year renewal options. Logan said the company hopes to remain in its new home for at least 30 years. Finding a new location wasn’t easy, and the move itself will be “no small logistical feat,” he said.
“I don’t want to do this again,” he said. “Not anytime soon.”
The move to the farmers market comes amid other changes for Logan’s. In January, the company acquired The Garden Hut, a 6-acre garden center on Old Honeycutt Road in Fuquay-Varina. The company expanded the inventory and staff and rebranded the center as Logan’s Garden Hut.
And Logan’s also recently opened Grasshopper Farms, a 15-acre strawberry farm, nursery and agrotourism center on Poole Road south of Knightdale.
