FROM THE ARCHIVES
John Allen, an employee of the Mayo Garden Center on Kingston Pike in the Knox Plaza shopping center, sets out the store’s display of snow sleds on Jan. 9, 1997.
LEFT: Varina Mayo was 28 and had no experience when she had to run the family business in 1943 when her brothers were serving in WWII. “We didn’t know we would win the war; we didn’t know if anybody would come back,” she later recalled to Knox News. Varina is pictured here around 1937. She died in 2018, a week before turning 103.
Even in 1936, the company now known as Mayo Garden Centers was deemed “the oldest ‘one-man company’ in Knoxville,” by the Knoxville News-Sentinel. For nearly 150 years, Mayo has been a landmark stop for garden products, outdoor equipment and furniture.
Mayo Garden Centers is so deeply rooted in Knoxville history that May 18 is designated as “Mayo Seed Company Day” in Knox County.
Daniel “D.R.” Mayo founded the business in 1878. His legacy has carried to a fifth generation of Mayos running the business, helmed by great-grandson Claxton Mayo Jr. and great-great-granddaughter Elizabeth Mayo Cox.
The story of how plant seeds sprouted one of Knoxville’s oldest family-owned businesses began in a small storefront on Gay Street.
Sowing seeds since 1878: How did Mayo Garden Centers start?
Daniel “D.R.” Mayo, an Arkansas cotton planter, moved to Knoxville to be with his bride-to-be and opened a grocery store on Gay Street. He began carrying garden and field seeds, which was rare for grocery stores at the time.
“The demand for seeds grew so rapidly, that Mr. Mayo turned it into a seed store exclusively,” the News-Sentinel reported in 1936. D.R. Mayo’s Seed Co. was created.
Dale Mayo began working in his father’s store as a boy, doing small tasks and gradually becoming familiar with the business. He took over by himself in 1916 when D.R. died. After having been on Gay Street for over 40 years, Dale moved to a storefront on Wall Avenue in the early 1920s, where the TVA Towers are now.
“The business was well known thruout the (East Tennessee territory), and still is,” the News-Sentinel reported in a 1930 profile on Dale. “It was, in fact, the first seed store in this part of the country.”
Claire Mayo became the first woman to steer the business after husband Dale died in 1934. Although she didn’t work in the store, she incorporated the business, served as its president and hired management until her sons were old enough to take over duties.
But when brothers Dan Mayo and Claxton Mayo Sr. were serving in World War II, it was sister Varina Mayo who stepped in. The “Southern belle” was just 28 and had no experience in the seed industry or running a business. She opened and closed the store every day, even turning a profit during wartime.
It also was Varina who suggested splitting the wholesale and retail sides of the business when the two brothers had different visions for the company’s future. A Bearden location was added in 1949, and by 1953, inventory expanded “ranging from farm tools and insecticides to tropical fish and canaries.”
The company formally split in the early 1990s as Mayo Garden Centers and Mayo Seed Co. At its height, the family business had four locations. The seed operation closed in 2019 and the garden center in Powell shut its doors in 2023.
Mayo made the decision last year to shift from selling heavy equipment like lawnmowers and power generators to focus on outdoor garden supplies and patio furniture.
“We’re going to be able to sell items that people want that will make them enjoy their home experience more,” Cox told Knox News at the time.