The Missouri location of Suburban Lawn & Garden is this expansive: It provides golf carts to customers looking for trees and shrubs. The fleet of 120 gas-powered carts helps customers peruse the wide selection of container-grown evergreens, blue spruce and other plants. Suburban grows 80 percent of what it sells, and the absence of a middleman results in customer savings. Trees, especially, were priced to move this year, after a robust growing season. Mindful that our leafy, oxygen-emitting friends are less likely to survive a transplant once their trunks reach a certain diameter, Suburban's owners — it's a second-generation family business — donated 200 rapid growers to Greensburg, Kansas, the town ravaged by a monster tornado in 2007. And the tree delivery was not a one-time act of charity. On Friday evenings during the spring, Suburban shares a portion of its sales with area nonprofits.
