In 2007, Owen Nursery and Florist celebrated 75 years of serving our McLean county customers. We continue to be a family owned and operated company. Two generations of family work at our 1700 Morrissey Drive location.

Our founder, James Owen, had a degree in Architectural Engineering from University of Illinois. The crash of 1929 and the depression that followed put an end to designing homes. James began working at Augustine Nursery. He combined his knowledge of architecture and plants as a landscape architect.

In the early 1930's James started his own nursery on Main Street. In later years, the site was home to Steak and Shake and is now a Monical's Pizza restaurant. Another early location was as a florist only on Main Street in downtown Bloomington.

James landscaped exhibits at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1933, where he met his future wife, Marie.

In the early 1940's, the James Owen Nursery opened on Oakland Avenue in Bloomington, Illinois offering florist, nursery and landscape services. The dirt road you see in the photograph is Oakland Avenue in the 1940's. James wife, Marie made the floral arrangements. We were at the Oakland Avenue location for nearly 50 years. In 1988 we moved to our current location at 1700 Morrissey Drive (Route 150 South). In the 1990's we opened two more Bloomington locations in an effort to better serve our customers — first on Clearwater Avenue and then on Main Street. We'd come full circle back to our roots on Main Street.

Our Morrissey location is open all year except for national holidays. Our Clearwater and Main Street locations are open for spring, summer and fall planting seasons. They are closed briefly late fall to stock the stores with handmade fresh evergreen wreaths, grave pillows and blankets as well as green and flocked Christmas trees for the holiday season.

As a young boy of six, Richard Owen sold geraniums for 10¢. This was a surprise to his parents who didn't know he was selling them! We still sell geraniums. Every spring we grow over 100,000 in our greenhouses. When they are in bud and bloom we open our growing greenhouses to the public so they can buy direct from the grower and save money. Make sure to stop by in May to brighten your landscape with our large selection of geraniums, hanging baskets, bedding plants and perennials.

Florist services were discontinued at the Oakland nursery in 1946. Then in 1984 Owen Nursery opened a floral shop at College Hills Mall for a few years. In 1986 the floral business was moved to the nursery on Oakland Avenue. 1988 saw another move to the new nursery location on 1700 Morrissey Drive where we have been located ever since. Andrea Owen Beyer, granddaughter of James Owen, is Floral Shop manager with 13 years of floral design experience. Her mother, Fran Owen, also creates stunning arrangements continuing the tradition of James and Marie Owen.

In 1946, the first mail order ads for strawberries were placed in newspapers. Later, the post office was located in our shipping room at the back of our nursery.

As a teenager Richard Owen worked at the nursery during the summer and school vacations. In 1959 he graduated from University of Illinois with his Bachelor of Science in Floriculture. He started running mail order advertisements for peonies, daylilies, iris and a combination ad in the St. Louis Post and Chicago American newspapers. Our extensive mail order business was born with a successful strawberry ad.

As technology changed, so did the nursery. We had a 10 key adding machine in 1967. In 1969 we acquired our first computer to process orders. Times have changed since those first ads in the 1940's. Now computers play key roles in monitoring our greenhouse, creating the advertisements, processing the orders and tracking our product in the postal system. However, without people to run them, computers aren't very helpful. It's the people that set our nursery apart and have kept it growing for over 75 years.