Before there was a Plant Haus, there was a list. A small spiral notebook full of birthdays and anniversaries belonging to friends in New Braunfels. Bob would wake up early, load a hanging basket into his truck, and his son Weston would ride along to deliver it before the school bell. Three or four years of this turned a hobby into a vocation. In the summer of 1977, Bob opened a 1,200-square-foot shop with a single greenhouse on North Walnut Avenue.

It never quite stopped growing. Weston left Austin and a business degree at the University of Texas to come home and work the bench. Today the original lot has spread to nearly two acres, with five greenhouses and a four-thousand-square-foot store. The notebook of friends has become a notebook of regulars — gardeners who learned the soil from us, then taught their kids to do the same.

We don't call ourselves the best. We just do a lot of good things. Whether they're spending ten dollars or a hundred, a customer is a customer. — Weston Pacharzina, owner

That's still the operating principle. We won't sell you a plant that won't make it through August. We'll talk you out of the wrong tomato variety. We'll show you which fertilizer to skip. People in this business probably bleed green — or brown — and after nearly half a century, ours is starting to show.