Weber's Greenhouses grow community, greenery

From OnMilwaukee.com: Franz Weding, Ann Coppersmith and her husband, Dan, operate Weber's Greenhouses, 4215 N. Green Bay Ave. and 9802 W. Capitol Dr. The three partners are growing some big plans for Milwaukee.

Weber's offers a full array of annuals, perennials, flowering plants and vegetable staples, such as Georgia collards, mustard greens, seven-top and purple-top turnips, big boy tomatoes, corn, okra, purple whole peas and crowder peas, in addition to all the bean varieties you can imagine.

Weber's also has everything else, from brussels sprouts, herbs and peppers to seeds, sod and gardening equipment.

Weber's Greenhouses began in 1931 as Weber's Flowers about 20 blocks south of its current location. Frank Weber and later his son, Austin, were retailers, buying flowers from growers and reselling them in the city. They moved Weber's to Green Bay Avenue in the early '50s, expanding the business in the late '70s to become the garden center it is today.

"Austin's son, Bruce Weber, built the business around soul food," says Weding. "He grew up in this neighborhood when it was predominately German, stayed and changed with the neighborhood when it became mostly African American."

Bruce closed the garden center in 2007 after his mother, Josephine, died. Weding and the Coppersmiths reopened Weber's a couple years later and have since been rebuilding the business.

"Bruce used to sell 25,000 big boy tomato plants a season and we're at about 15,000; we haven't reached Bruce's numbers, yet," says Weding.

The three partners focus on vegetables, although people's love for flowering plants is what keeps them in business. They were able to expand recently to operate the former Capitol Drive Nursery Garden, another longtime family-owned greenhouse that owner Dorothy Byrd donated to Teen Challenge of Wisconsin.

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