Chalily Ponds & Gardens is celebrating its grand opening weekend in Wildwood, Missouri, with a ribbon cutting Friday afternoon and festivities continuing through Saturday at its new home at 18944 St. Albans Road. The water-garden retailer, known for aquatic plants and pond features, has moved into the former Fahr Greenhouse site, a property with more than 70 years of horticultural history in the community.
According to a City of Wildwood, MO - Government Facebook post, the city livestreamed the ribbon cutting on its Facebook page at 4:30 p.m. Friday, with attendees invited to arrive after 4:00 p.m. The grand opening celebration featured lily pad photos, a food truck, attendance prizes and special discounts, and continues Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Chalily Ponds & Gardens was founded in 2011 by owners Joe and Tonya Summers, and the business operated for years along Manchester Road in St. Louis County before relocating west to Wildwood this year, according to the City of Wildwood.
A Storefront Steeped in Local History
The 18944 St. Albans Road property was previously home to Fahr Greenhouse, a local horticultural staple that operated in Wildwood for more than 70 years, per the city. Former owners Patrick and Mary Bellrose were named St. Louis County's “Farm Family of the Year” in 2019 by the University of Missouri Extension for their long-standing horticultural contributions to the Wildwood community, as reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2019.
The site did not pass directly from the Bellroses to Chalily, however. St. Louis agtech startup Solis Agrosciences purchased the Fahr Greenhouse property in late 2022 for agricultural research, according to BioSTL. The city notes that Solis closed operations there in early 2024 after municipal zoning regulations prevented non-agricultural research facilities in the property's Non-Urban Residence District, which left the historic greenhouse vacant and eventually available for a return to traditional nursery use.
A Massive Greenhouse Footprint
The property includes 52,944 square feet of greenhouse facilities equipped with automated heating, cooling and irrigation systems, according to a LandWatch listing for the site. That climate-controlled scale gives Chalily far more room than its earlier Manchester Road footprint to cultivate aquatic plants locally. Beyond retail plant sales, Chalily operates as a full-service contractor providing pond design, maintenance, seasonal cleanouts, fountain installations and equipment rentals, the city says, giving the business recurring revenue streams beyond its seasonal storefront traffic.
Chalily is also a recognized commercial member of the International Waterlily & Water Gardening Society and takes part in regional events hosted by the St. Louis Water Garden Society, according to those organizations' own listings. Those affiliations point to specialized expertise in aquatic plant cultivation and water feature design within a niche botanical trade.
Part of a Broader Wildwood Business Push
Chalily's arrival fits into a wider commercial push in Wildwood that has brought several new small businesses to the area in 2025 and 2026, including Good News Brewing Company and St. Louis Community College's Health Sciences center, the city says. A 2025 municipal economic survey found that a majority of Wildwood residents regularly left city limits for specialty retail and dining, a trend that has driven city efforts to recruit distinct local businesses that can capture that spending locally.
Wildwood does not assess a municipal real estate property tax on residents or local businesses, instead relying primarily on local sales taxes and business licenses to fund public services, according to the city. That structure gives municipal leaders an incentive to court sales-tax-generating retailers like Chalily rather than lean on property levies to fund infrastructure and services.
