Olivette Woman Ditches Banking Business to Become Pro Gardener

Pauline Cella was a banker from the time she left college, through the changes in corporate banking that her merged employer Bank of America with NationsBank, and even into business in a private bank with other BofA refugees.

The Olivette resident gave up the dollars-and-cents world of banking a dozen years ago when she had the opportunity to buy a nursery in O'Fallon, MO, called Planthaven Farms.

"Retirement," for her, meant learning how to run a business—a business, she says, that has doubled in size since she took over.

But there was always one group of stubborn potential customers she couldn't crack: Her Olivette neighbors.

"We could never get any of our friends to drive over that bridge," said Cella, who has lived with her husband in Olivette for 16 years. "I happened to be at Starbucks and my friends said, 'What about moving to Olivette?'"

Thus was born an idea, an idea that's before the Olivette planning and community development commission tonight: How about opening a temporary garden center, and run it for only for a few months of the year, in Olivette?

If she gets city approval this year, it will be Cella's third year to run the business in Olivette, where it will sit on 20 parking spaces leased to her by Olivette Lanes, 9520 Olive Blvd.

Cella prides herself on growing all her own plants for the business, and therefore, offering plants she can't find from wholesalers—interesting colors of petunias, for example, or 32 varieties of tomatoes and more than 40 types of peppers.

She says having the business in Olivette for 120 days a year helps her business in O'Fallon, by exposing it to people who might work in St. Louis, but live in St. Charles County—and didn't know she was there.

Her goal is to open the temporary greenhouse in the Olivette Lanes parking lot Easter weekend, March 30, and to be open for 120 days.

The Olivette city staff has recommended that the city approve her plans: "Based on last year’s performance, the operations went well and without any complaints," a staff report noted.