By CHRISTINE BOATWRIGHT / Staff Writer

When Ruth and Don Driggers invested their love for gardening into opening Vincent Gardens a year ago, they missed their opportunity for a proper ribbon cutting. On March 26, however, the Vincent community celebrated the Driggers’ year-long success.

“We started last year,” Ruth said. “Basically, my husband and I love gardening, and it was something we’d toyed around with doing. We decided to pursue it as an outlet for us and our community.”

The store specializes in vegetables and fruits, Ruth said. The couple sells bedding, plants, shrubs and trees, but specializes in vegetable seeds and plants.

The store didn’t have a proper ribbon-cutting ceremony at its inception because the business started “very small,” Ruth said.

“We’ve been open for a year, but this is kind of a reopening,” Ruth said. “We weren’t open during the winter that much. We didn’t do a ribbon cutting last year.”

Community education is at the heart of the business.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony offered demonstrations and information on planting different fruit trees and vegetables.

“What we try to do is a couple times of year is some kind of educational thing at our garden center,” Ruth said. “We’re associated with the Extension program. My husband is a part of the Master Gardener group of Shelby County. We try to do educational things.

“That’s what we’re about too, more than just selling, we want to educate people on how to plant and when to plant,” Ruth said.