The downtown plant-and-art shop represents Allegan County business in this year’s cohort — a 26-week program pairing established owners with mentors. As Eccentric Garden moves to grow its own plants on-site, owner Lacey Schmitt is betting on the next chapter.
By Art Nicholas
[For the Allegan County News]
When Lacey Schmitt opened Eccentric Garden in downtown Allegan in June 2023, she named the shop for her late father, Christopher — the man who first handed her a trowel. “My love of plants and nature began as a child when I lived on 10 woodsy acres and helped my dad garden,” she said.
Schmitt spent most of her life as a working artist, and that sensibility runs through the store, which is as much a small gallery as a plant shop. It now carries work from more than 10 local artists. “With my background in art and my love of plants, I wanted the shop to be a cohesive mix of both,” she said. “I love supporting other artists in our community, and their work truly completes the atmosphere.”
Now Schmitt is one of 10 Southwest Michigan owners named to the South Haven Regional Business Hub’s 2026 Growth Series — and the only business from Allegan County in the group, a marker of the nonprofit’s expanding reach beyond its South Haven base.
Growing its own
The reason the timing matters is what’s happening behind the storefront. Eccentric Garden is shifting from buying its inventory to growing its own product through plant tissue culture — a change Schmitt says is reshaping the business. “My main focus this year is scaling,” she said. Producing plants on-site, she explained, will let the shop offer a larger variety of healthy, locally grown plants, cut the time she spends traveling for restock, and — crucially — build the volume to support an online store alongside the downtown location. “My business is growing in big ways, no pun intended,” she said.
That ambition is also why she applied. Schmitt heard about the Growth Series from a friend, and what she most wants from it is financial fluency. The single biggest thing she hopes to gain, she said, is “the financial knowledge to grow smartly and invest our profits effectively, while learning to budget and gain a better grasp of managing incoming revenue.”
Her mentor is well-matched to that goal. Michele Coy, a leadership and business strategist, brings both a financial background and rare firsthand horticulture experience — she has worked for a flower wholesaler and a flower broker over her career. Coy says she can help Schmitt make sure her products, including the new tissue-culture line, are priced profitably, and can open doors through connections across different market sectors.
Coy’s own path to mentoring was a long one. She started at 16 in an accounting firm working with small-business owners, and at 42 took what she calls a leap of faith to focus on supporting small, women-owned businesses. Mentored herself by Debi Howe, she went on to volunteer with SCORE and, during the pandemic, helped owners through the Small Business Development Center at Western Michigan University. “Part of my business model is giving back to the community,” she said. When Howe asked her to mentor in the Growth Series, it was an easy yes.
What she found in Schmitt, Coy said, was a natural fit for the way she works with creatives and artists. “Lacey has been a pure joy,” she said. “You can see that she is passionate about her business.” In a phrase that lands neatly for a plant shop, Coy described the reward of mentoring as “the opportunity to plant a seed, bring a new perspective, provide a new resource.”
A downtown growing up together
Schmitt’s bet on Eccentric Garden is also a bet on downtown Allegan itself. The district “has grown immensely in the three years that I have been there,” she said, with new and diverse businesses filling a town that “had been quiet for some time,” and public spaces and streetscapes noticeably improved. Her shop, she said, “has become a favorite stop for many” — known for offerings like its Plants & Pints classes.
The challenges are the familiar ones of small-town retail. “You rely solely on foot traffic, which can make it difficult to grow and sustain,” she said — part of what makes the planned online store so important. What small downtowns like Allegan need most, in her view, is “funding to revitalize old and vacant buildings, which in turn allows new businesses to fill those spaces.” More businesses, she said, bring more visitors to see the revitalization underway. Through it all, she wants the community to stay “at the forefront as we grow.”
What the Growth Series is
The Growth Series is a free, 26-week program for small-business owners past the startup stage who are focused on stabilizing and scaling. Participants meet roughly every other week for workshops and one-on-one coaching, and each is matched with an industry mentor; alumni keep access to the Hub’s network afterward. The Hub, a nonprofit launched in 2023, began in the South Haven region and has been expanding into surrounding counties, Allegan among them.
To Coy, that kind of resource is “vital” — a place that has assembled, as she put it, “a large collaborative group of Subject Matter Experts” she can point her own clients toward.
The rest of the cohort
Eccentric Garden joins nine other Southwest Michigan businesses in this year’s Growth Series: Adapt Technologies (South Haven), Biggby (Stevensville), Blue Shore Marine Services (Bangor), Decorators’ Choice (South Haven), Max Transportation (South Haven), Mercury Engineering & Design (St. Joseph), NEW AGE Laboratories (South Haven), Twist & Stout Mobile Bar (New Buffalo) and Waypoint Processing (Bangor).
Two of those pairings show the program’s range. In South Haven, David Cooper runs Adapt Technologies, which designs and installs safe-patient-handling and accessibility systems that help people with physical challenges stay safely in their homes — work he traces to caring for an aunt with special needs and to a grandmother he calls an early advocate for inclusion. His mentor, Bruce Gobdel, spent 37 years at the accounting and consulting firm Crowe, retiring as its chairman. “David has deep industry knowledge and a strong commitment to growth,” Gobdel said.
Also in South Haven, Sierra Wall is stepping into leadership of NEW AGE Laboratories, the lab her father built and ran for nearly three decades. Founded in 1998 doing environmental testing for clients including the Department of Defense and NASA, it has grown into an international operation known for plant-sap analysis, helping farmers see what their crops are absorbing in real time. “‘Established’ does not mean ‘finished,’” Wall said of why she joined. Her mentor, Julie Callaway, president and owner of BDN Industrial Hygiene Consultants, bought her own company in January 2020 just as the pandemic hit — the kind of transition Wall said she wanted in a guide.
From the Hub
“We are incredibly proud to welcome our 2026 Growth Series cohort. This group represents a diverse and ambitious set of business leaders deeply committed to growing stronger, more resilient companies across Southwest Michigan. What makes this program so impactful is not just the curriculum, but the combination of strategic education, mentorship, accountability, and community. Over the next 26 weeks, these entrepreneurs will be challenged to think differently, lead more intentionally, and build businesses positioned for long-term success. We’re equally grateful to the mentors who have stepped forward to invest their time and expertise. Their guidance helps turn insight into action and plays a critical role in each participant’s growth journey.”
-Elizabeth Bernhard, Executive Director South Haven Regional Business Hub
For Schmitt, the shop she built out of love — for plants, for art, for the father it honors — is now trying to become something that lasts. The Growth Series, she hopes, will help her grow it without losing what made it hers.
Eccentric Garden is located in downtown Allegan. The South Haven Regional Business Hub’s Growth Series is a free program; details are available at southhavenregionalbusinesshub.org.