In an area where real estate sellers are many and buyers few, Ann Arbor’s Scott Kunst is eager to make a purchase.

Of course, Kunst — a rock star among gardeners, who runs an heirloom bulb business from his Old West Side home — does have some specific criteria. The property should be fairly close to town; include enough acreage to grow dahlias, tulips, lilies and rare varieties of other plants; and it should have an old farmhouse, a barn or some outbuildings.

He’s not exaggerating. On a quick tour of Old House Gardens, I meet three of the four employees who work in a 10-by-10 room in the back of the house. They’re as friendly and upbeat as can be, but I can reach out and shake hands with each one without taking a step.

Old House Gardens needs a new home.

A former middle-school teacher now in his 15th year as a purveyor of unusual and even endangered bulbs, Kunst is working with a real estate agent to find a new spot for his business. But he’s also turned to friends to help in the search.

A recent issue of the Washtenaw County Historical Society’s newsletter included a special flier outlining the mail-order business’s needs. “We had at least a dozen responses to that,” says Kunst, pleased that folks devoted to saving old structures are sympathetic to the parallel mission of preserving heirloom plants.

Customers are in the hunt, too. But, so far, nothing has quite filled the bill. And with fall, the peak season for bulbs, on the horizon, Kunst is stepping up the pace.

“We’re holding ourselves back,” he says. The crowded office space is merely uncomfortable — and a bit of an imposition on Kunst’s wife, Jane Raymond. But the garage where the bulbs that roll in from U.S. and Dutch suppliers are matched with orders simply can’t hold all that Old House now sells. And with limited planting space, Kunst can’t grow the really rare plants that he’d like.

Farming, he says, is the next step.

If Kunst hasn’t blipped across your radar screen before, here’s what you should know: Its modest quarters notwithstanding, Old House Gardens is known among enthusiasts coast to coast. Kunst is sought out by publications from The Washington Post to gardening magazines. His catalog has grown from its inaugural three pages to 52. Sales are increasing at about 20 percent a year.

The lineage of Old House Garden’s antique bulbs can be traced back hundreds of years. Some may be grown by only one farmer anywhere in the world. As many as 100 offered in the new catalog aren’t available anywhere else.

Old House Gardens is the Zingerman’s of the garden bulb world and, like artisanal food, the heirlooms are priced accordingly. The rarest tulip bulbs can cost $8 to $12 for a single bulb. You’re paying for quality and to help save an old bulb from extinction.

A gardener since childhood, Kunst has a master’s degree in historic preservation. He married the interests into an expertise in landscape history and found a niche in bulbs that, unlike heirloom fruits and vegetables, were not being preserved.

“The idea of saving garden variety cultivars (is) kind of new,” he says, sitting in the shade of a grape arbor behind his Third Street home. “But they’re part of our history. They reflect culture and changing tastes.”

They’re also fragile. With the right little farm — a “farmette” he suggests — Old House can expand its business and efforts to preserve rare bulbs.

“Since we’re all about preservation, we’d like something that would be a visible embodiment of that,” says Kunst, who aims for a historic property. “I’m convinced the place we want is not on the market. But maybe there’s someone who’s thinking of retirement or has been reluctant to offer a property in the down market.”

Tipsters can contact Kunst at charlie@oldhousegardens.com. There’s a bounty of eternal gratitude and an unspecified number of free bulbs.

[For more specifics about our search, please see Wanted: Old Farmhouse, Barn, and 5-10 Acres Near Ann Arbor .]