“I desire Millcreek Gardens to be a place where people in the community can come and learn to enjoy gardening. I want to build upon that by creating spaces of learning and inspiration.”

—Heidi Orme 

A visit to Millcreek Gardens is a whole sensory experience. Thousands of trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, and herbaceous plants fill the 3.7-acre space with a cacophony of color, fragrance, and texture. The garden center bursts with all the tools and trinkets for adorning landscapes or interiors with plant life. 

“Our mission is to be here for the community, to support them in their outdoor and indoor living spaces, and to help them grow things and beautify their reserve,” explains LaRene Bautner, Millcreek Gardens’ second-generation general manager. “It could be a tomato cage, a bag of rocks, a bag of fertilizer, a tray of plants, or a whole landscape.”

The Roots

Millcreek Gardens didn’t become Salt Lake’s mainstay gardening center overnight. It’s been a nearly 70-year journey that began with LaRene’s parents, Vernon and Murriel Smith. Vernon used his artistic vision to launch his landscaping career. “He took pictures of homes with a Polaroid camera, which he called the ‘futuroid camera’, and colored in what the grass, bushes, and shrubs would look like. Then he would go to the door and say, ‘Hi, I’m Vernon Smith, and I own a landscaping company. I’d like to show you a picture.’ And they looked at the picture closely and said, ‘This is my house.’ And he would say, ‘Would you like your house to look like this?’ And that’s how he would get his work,” LaRene remembers.

In the fall of 1955, Vernon and Murriel purchased a home on a 1-acre lot, where the current office now sits. “They moved in a couple of days before Christmas. And it was slim pickings. They had $25 left in their pocket. And had to make it to spring,” LaRene explains.

“When my dad moved here [LaRene gestures around the current day office building], he immediately made sure the furnace in the greenhouse worked.” The greenhouse on the property was in a state of disrepair. “He looked around and found baling wire and lath…He covered the greenhouse, turned on the furnace, heated it, and started filling it with his own juniper cuttings, lilacs, forsythia, and a few other things.”

Millcreek Gardens’ first greenhouse supplied Vernon with plants for the family landscaping business. And it, indeed, was a family affair. LaRene is the youngest of Vernon and Murriel’s seven children, and every person in the Smith family contributed. “All seven of us kids worked,” LaRene remembers. “I started at age five weeding with an ice cream bucket, making five cents an hour.” LaRene relished the work; by age 11, she was running the cash register. “I still remember my first transactions.”

Although she enjoyed hard work, it wasn’t in LaRene’s vision for her future to work at Millcreek Gardens, let alone run the family business. She graduated from the University of Idaho in Moscow in 1983. “I didn’t want to be a working mom. I wanted to be home with my family,” she explains.

While LaRene was growing the garden center. Millcreek Landscaping completed several massive projects, including the upper 18 holes of Wasatch Mountain State Park Golf Course, the Ogden Temple, and countless projects in Park City. “We did a lot of saying yes.”

Then, in the early 90s, Vernon and Murriel were ready for a change of pace. “It became of interest for some of the employees to buy the landscaping component of Millcreek Gardens. So, my dad sold off the company to three of their employees and a consultant.”

In 1995, LaRene and her brother Dale purchased the retail side of the business from their parents and operated the business together for eight years until Dale started his own venture in 2004.
Despite her longings to be a stay-at-home mom, Millcreek Gardens became a place of refuge and peace for LaRene and her children, Natalie, Parker, Heidi, Michael, and Christopher. “I had adversity in my life. I was barely making it sometimes. But yet, I come here, put a smile on my face, and be really positive. So, what is the culture? What is my vision? It’s to have a great time, be positive, share goodness, tend to Mother Earth, and be kind.”

Looking Ahead

The next story in the History of Millcreek Gardens Series will explore how the garden center has grown under LaRene’s direction and Heidi’s involvement and vision for the space. In the meantime, stop by Millcreek Gardens today to check out our amazing selection of plants, giftware, and gardening supplies!

Contributing writer: Ashley Brown