Kaitlin Radebaugh Ushers Her Family’s 100-Year-Old Floral Business Into Its Next Century

Radebaugh Florist & Greenhouses sits in the same spot it always has for the last century—the corner of Burke and Aigburth in Towson. So when the business turned 100 in 2024, Kaitlin Radebaugh, four years into her tenure as president and the first woman in her family to lead the company, decided it was time for a refresh.

“We had our centennial, which was awesome,” she says on a bright but chilly day in mid-February. “It’s great to have been here for 100 years, but I felt like we just weren’t reflecting exactly what we were doing.”

The Radebaugh campus includes a green-house for selling houseplants, annuals, herbs, and perennials as well as garden tools, fertilizers, and other outdoor accessories. Inside the house, with its new green-and-white striped awning, is the flower shop—don’t even try looking for a parking spot during prom season—and over the decades it’s also turned into a gift boutique stocked with cards, jewelry, candles, housewares, and accessories. There’s also Flowers & Ice, their seasonal snowball stand, which is a neighborhood hit during the summer.

All of these individual parts worked perfectly, but not always in conjunction. So, one of Radebaugh’s main goals for the renovation was to create a better connection between the greenhouse and the gift shop.

“It’s wild because there are shop people and they’re like, ‘You have a greenhouse?’ Or there’s people who shop the greenhouse for years and have never been in the shop. They’re plant people. And I guess they just thought, like, I don’t know, it’s just cut flowers inside. We’re just trying to make it a little bit more fluid.”

The renovation is also out of necessity. The once powerful greenhouse doesn’t hold as much sway anymore. “That’s changed based on generations,” she says. “The younger generation doesn’t quite garden the way the older generation did. Instead, they love indoor plants, which is great—the funkier and weirder the better.”

They also get a lot of Towson University students who are looking less for heirloom tomato plants and more for snake plants and philodendron for their apartments and dorm rooms. That meant a lot of the greenhouse was underutilized, which started Radebaugh thinking about what else she could use the greenhouse for.

“Let’s make this space more available to the public,” she thought. “Let’s have events, let’s do birthday parties, let’s bring people in.”

That’s how the renovation took shape. “We needed bathrooms, we needed to make structural changes to make it more feasible because we’ve been here so long. These are old buildings—so it’s a big endeavor.”

And since they were planning on hosting events, they had to get creative, like a durable check-out station that can double as a bar.

When her great-great-grandfather, George, started Radebaugh, he probably never imagined cocktail parties one day taking place in his greenhouses. The first two greenhouses were constructed in 1928. Next, they were able to purchase the house next door—that’s where Kaitlin Radebaugh’s father grew up. (Her general manager now lives there.) Eventually they would own other houses in and around the area.

“They all lived on the property as the generations grew,” says Radebaugh.

Those continuing the family business were mostly the men in the family. After George came his sons, Carroll and Joe. Carroll was Radebaugh’s grandfather. And then eventually her dad, Steve.

A 48,000-square-foot greenhouse was constructed on the family farm in Freeland in 1985, which allowed the business to meet the demand for potted annuals, Easter lilies, and poinsettias for their retail greenhouse, as well as for all their wholesale customers. In 1988, a 10,000-square-foot flower design center was built just down the street from the original Radebaugh. Still in operation, it houses a processing room, design  area, delivery facilities, and plenty of refrigeration space for flowers needed for weddings, funerals, and other big design purposes.

“I feel like every generation did big things,” says Radebaugh. “Everyone was doing something, whether it was purchasing land or putting up greenhouses or the design center.”

The third-generation owners included not only her dad but her three uncles, Joe Jr., Doug, and Ned, who took over their half of the business from their father, Joe. “And now it’s just me, the fourth,” she says.

Yes, Radebaugh grew up in and around the family business—she remembers making fruit baskets at Christmas—“but it was kind of a boy’s club. It was always run by men, and I think I just couldn’t ever see that I would have a place here.”

She went to college and got a business degree. “I had been out of school for several years before my dad asked me to come back. And he didn’t ask me to come back in the sense that he thought I was going to take over.” Instead, he wanted her help with marketing—her area of expertise. “So that’s when I came back and then it kind of evolved over a series of events. But I’m certainly very happy that it did.”

But it’s a lot to manage, she admits. “There’s definitely a lot of moving parts. The bulk of our business is perishable, right? We’re growing stuff. We’re importing stuff from Ecuador and Canada. So, it’s a lot to watch over.”

The shop renovation was a nice break, a chance for her to mix some feminine energy with the family business. Designer Stephanie Bradshaw, who also oversaw the complete rebrand and greenhouse space renovation, wanted the shop to both feel fresh while also paying homage to the history.

“It’s so fun and welcoming, right?” says Radebaugh. “You walk in and it’s warm and visually beautiful and then you hit the lavender wallpaper,” she says gesturing behind the check-out counter at the Queen’s Lace wallpaper.

“This was the starting point,” says Bradshaw. “I saw this paper, and I was like, ‘It’s so delicate, so lovely, and Kaitlin is so lovely.’ She’s the new female CEO, it was really kind of embodying this sense of a refreshing breath of fresh air, reimagined, soft but still calming.”

The entire space now features six different wallpapers, a spectacular tulip chandelier in a new consultation area, and lots of surprising paint hues including persimmon and Isle of Pines, a moody saturated green.

“We really wanted it to be a space where everybody felt welcome, and the community would continue to come,” says Bradshaw, who felt especially honored to be working with a legacy brand. “It’s like a dream to come in and have all these colors playing joyfully together in one space. It’s a little escape.”

Back inside the greenhouse, Radebaugh is greeted by shop dog Bonnie, a big, gentle yellow Lab. The greenhouse, where you can get mucky and wet by day but can seamlessly transform into a vibrant party room at night, represents the two sides of Radebaugh Florist & Greenhouses—and of Radebaugh herself.

It feels good to walk around and be reminded of all the changes that have occurred under her leadership.

“I don’t think I do a great job of being like, ‘Look at all the things we did,’” says Radebaugh. “I’m usually just in it.”