Gardens Alive

Gardens Alive!, Inc. is a privately owned multi-title catalog company founded in 1984. It sells garden and lawn supplies, specializing in organic products under its namesake catalog. The company has expanded by aggressively purchasing other catalog companies, including expansion into gift and games after acquiring the assets of defunct catalog company BlueSky Brands in 2008. As of 2010 has annual sales of approximately $170 million, 60 percent of which was from garden-related business. Operating about a dozen seed catalogs, the company was roughly four times larger than the second largest seed cataloger in the United States as of a 2011 report.

Gardens Alive! sells primarily through its nationwide catalog network and its online store. The namesake catalog is printed on small, newspaper-like sheets and features "funky DIY photos". Other gardening catalogs operated include Audubon Workshop, Breck's, Gurney's Seed, Henry Field's, Iseli Nursery, Michigan Bulb, New Holland Bulb, Spring Hill Nurseries, and Weeks Roses, all of which have been acquired from buy-outs of other companies.

Gardens Alive! operates fulfillment centers in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, Tipp City, Ohio and Lewisburg, Ohio with a distribution center located in Fairfield, Ohio. Marketing and merchandising offices are located in Ohio, Atlanta, Boston, and Holland, Indiana. Gardens Alive! hosts the print version of Mike McGrath's "Question of the Week" from the nationally syndicated weekly radio show, "You Bet Your Garden".

As of 2010, Gardens Alive! had annual sales of approximately $170 million and employed 400–450 people year round, and close to 1,000 at peak seasonal demand. Internet sales accounted for 40 to 45 percent of the business, with catalogs being most of the rest. Gifts and general merchandise accounted for 40 percent of the company's revenue; the other 60 percent was gardening related. As of 2011, Gardens Alive! was the top seed cataloger in the United States, with $100.6 million of revenue from its seed catalogs compared to $24.8 million for Park Seed Company, the second largest cataloger.

Gardens Alive! founder Niles Kinerk grew up on a farm in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The family farm primarily raised livestock 'Homer P. Kinerk and Sons Polan and China Hogs' , but Nile's interest was in horticultural, especially organics. He worked at Burpee Seeds for a year before really learning the direct mail business at Josten's Publishing Company's library services division. In 1978, he founded a library supply catalog called The Library Store.