Licence verification
Is a plant nursery licensed in Kentucky? How to check
Does Kentucky publish a public registry?
Yes. The Office of the State Entomologist, University of Kentucky maintains a public register of licensed nursery dealers and growers. View the registry .
What we hold
- Records on file
- 490
- As of
- 2026-01-30
Fields captured: licence number, business name, address, county, phone, source URL, and this as-of date, for every record.
A "State-licensed" badge only asserts current licensure while its registry file is 90 days old or less; past that, the badge on an affected listing states its as-of date instead of claiming current status. 490 of the 490 records on file here are older than that cap: those listings currently show the unconfirmed, as-of-date form of the badge, not "State-licensed."
We do not claim every nursery listed on this site in Kentucky is licensed. Only the 490 businesses matched against this exact registry carry a "State-licensed" badge on their own listing page, each linking back to this registry as its citation.
Licensed by regulatory role
- Big Box: 255
- Unclassified: 235
How to verify a specific business
Search our Kentucky directory for the business by name. A "State-licensed" badge on its listing page means we matched it against this exact registry, with the date we checked. If it isn't in our directory yet, check the state's own list directly.
Format
An annual dated PDF roster of licensed nursery dealers.
Kentucky's licensed nursery dealer roster is issued by the Office of the State Entomologist at the University of Kentucky, not the state's agriculture department: an annual, dated PDF listing every licensed nursery dealer in the state.
We matched the Kentucky businesses shown above against that roster. The document itself is dated January 30, 2026, printed on every page, and every one of those matches carries that same as-of date, now well past the 90-day cap described above. None of them currently shows the "State-licensed" badge; each shows the plain as-of-date form instead, stating what the file said on January 30 without claiming it is still current today. A Kentucky business with no badge at all may still hold a real, current license; it may simply not be in the 2026 roster we hold, or its match may have missed on a name difference.
The Office of the State Entomologist's own roster above is the record to check or correct directly. This directory's own correction link, on any listing page, lets you flag a wrong or outdated match so we can re-check it against a newer roster once one is published.
Other states we hold a registry for
Only these 11 states publish (or make bulk-extractable) a public licensed-nursery registry we've verified directly. Every other state is silent here on purpose, not overlooked.
Sources
Office of the State Entomologist, University of Kentucky, as of 2026-01-30.