The family business started in the mid 1890s. Sarah Gillespie's great-great-great Aunt Clara and Uncle Al Grande ran the John Grande Greenhouse on Grande Avenue in Indianapolis. Soon the Grande's would expand into a full-service florist shop changing their name to John Grande and Sons.
The shop would change locations in the 1940s to near George Washington High School on Washington Street where it would stay for the next 27 years. In 1960, the Gillespie family, a generation removed from Clara and Al, purchased the business and officially changed the name of the shop to Gillespie Florists in 1975 when Sarah's father took over.
"I was born into it," Sarah, current co-owner of Gillespie's, said. "At 3, I remember picking up flowers and stems off the floor and trying to put them together and make something with it."
Growing up, Gillespie would spend nights after school and weekends at the shop helping her father. Her father showed her how to properly clean up, take orders and assist customers. Eventually Gillespie would go to college and earn a degree in education. She taught for a few years but missed being at the florist shop. So in 2001, Gillespie returned to flowers full-time. Earlier this year, she purchased the shop from her father alongside her son, Tyler, and sister, Della Gillespie Mendenhall.
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