Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
CLICK HERE FOR ADDITIONAL PHOTOS OF BAYER'S GARDEN SHOP.
The little white building is a South City landmark. But when Oscar and Hortense Bayer opened Bayer’s Garden Shop (3401 Hampton, 314-781-2314, bayergardenshops.com) in 1941, it was down the road a piece, back when the road was gravel. They and the kids—Ronald, Sylvia, and Jeannine—lived in this building.
Or part of it: The room with the plastic pots is the original footprint of the house. (Ron’s horse, Major, lived in an attached stable—he used to stick his head into Oscar and Hortense’s bedroom window.) Ron took over the business in 1973 and ran it until his death in 2011. Now his sons, Greg and Jason, are at the helm. They digitized the store’s outdated manual systems and set up a Facebook page, where they continually announce new arrivals, from pansy flats in March to mums in the fall.
Indoors, you’ll find everything from vegetable seeds ($1.59-plus) to potted cacti arrangements ($14 to $23). Outside, you’ll find a tidy shelf of terra-cotta pots, mulch, and outdoor statuary—from a cat cleaning her paw to dragons’ heads. (If you need, say, specialty gravel made from river stones, check the store’s location at 5926 Old State in Imperial.)
Five years ago, Bayer’s was the first to carry the now-legendary ghost pepper. This summer, the store will offer the new Guinness World Record holder for hottest pepper: the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T.
“It’s 33 percent hotter,” says Jason. “Some of our guys here are big pepperheads. We grew the plants experimentally last year and harvested the peppers, and these guys wanted to try it, ’cause they’re crazy,”
he says, laughing. “So they tried it, and they burnt their mouth all up, but they loved it.”
Asked how the store has continued to flourish, Jason replies without hesitation: “Our employees—a lot of them have been with us 10, 20, 30 years, and they know their departments top to bottom.” For example, Michelle Fields, a longtime fixture at the South City store, now runs the Imperial greenhouse.
No matter what you set on your cart—whether it’s plants, rocks, or 50 pounds of mulch—you will never sacrifice your lumbar health here. Bayer’s employees will always carry it to your car and load it up for you.
