Winter Makes No Promises in the Adirondack Mountains

Winter makes no promises in the Adirondack mountains. One day snowy and glistening, the next day a melting torrent of river ice, it comes and goes as it pleases. Just as a 16” snowfall in the middle of February does not signal perfect ski conditions for the rest of the season, neither does a 60 degree day in March signal the end of its wintry grip. Most of us who live here year round accept this reality and some of us do so with less complaining than others. But while even the most die hard winter enthusiasts amongst us begin to anticipate these first signs of spring with eagerness, we know that we might still have to wait a bit for the buds to swell, the white to diminish and the green to take its place.

One thing we can count on at the end of March is that the greenhouses at East Branch Organics will be warm and quickly filling with colorful plants for your spring gardens. It happens so quickly. One day we are repairing benches and taking inventory of supplies and within weeks, we are nursing along baby plants in their most tender stage of life in our comfortable greenhouses, while winter may or may not continue to rage on outside. So take heart and know that whenever winter does decide to release her grip on our landscape, we will have an abundant supply of healthy plants to accompany spring’s return.

Ten Years of East Branch Organics

Ten years ago, on Mother’s Day weekend 2011, we opened the doors of East Branch Organics to the public for the first time. The previous month was a complete blur of activity as we cleaned the buildings, recovered greenhouses, put down flooring, fixed heaters, repaired irrigation lines, ordered inventory and started growing plants. We had moved to Keene Valley the previous year from Nantucket, MA with no real plans of working in Keene Valley. We had planned to continue managing our robust landscaping company in Nantucket and we wanted to move to the Adirondack mountains to give our children the fresh air and the quality education that Keene Valley offered as we commuted back to the island for work. Little did we know that we would stumble upon an abandoned garden center in the middle of town that would capture our imaginations, our hearts and, eventually, most of our time as well. 

Owning a garden center had been a dream of mine for quite some time. My sister and I had been growing plants in greenhouses for years for our clients. After helping to start the farmer’s market in Nantucket, I fell in love with the interaction with the market customers and I wanted to create a farmer’s market that ran more than just one day a week. I had written a business plan to purchase a farm in Nantucket, and although that particular property was not meant to be, the plan remained lodged in the back of my head, just waiting for the right opportunity to present itself. They say that timing is everything, and for us, even during an economic recession when independent garden centers were closing everywhere due to competition from big box stores, the timing was somehow just right. The garden center in Keene had been vacant for almost ten years when we found it. It was in rough shape, but we could see its potential hiding behind years of neglect and disuse. The pretty little building had beautiful woodworking, a funky layout and greenhouses that we just could not resist. The grounds were overgrown, but underneath we discovered the bones of a great perennial display yard. There was an adorable little wine shop all set up with built in shelving. All we needed was a lot of hard work, patience, persistence and a ton of help from our friends and family to begin to turn it into our dream job.

Looking back, it is hard to believe that it has already been ten years here. In ten years, we have added two more greenhouses, a grocery store, craft beer shop and a huge variety of bulk and bagged goods. We have expanded our services to include service to hundreds of properties for hardscaping and gardening installations, as well as floral design for events and weddings. Our staff that started out with one part time person during our first season has grown to 15 people in the summer. We feel so fortunate to be able to provide these services to this wonderful community and to be able to have a creative and professional team to support these services. We are humbled and grateful to be able to continue to grow this business and we look forward to the next phase of this business. Somehow, it feels like we are just getting started!

The Joy of Spring

Spring always brings with it a burst of energy and hope for gardeners.  It is a season of excitement and energy, as the days grow longer and warmer, the snow loosens its grip on the landscape and the color begins to return to our worlds.  This year, that excitement is further heightened by the hopeful anticipation that is accompanying our collective global psyche as we emerge from the tough year that we’ve all experienced.  As our greenhouses fill with new plants, and the sun warms the soil and ourselves as we work with the plants, we cannot help but feel gratitude for the renewal that spring promises.  With a heightened focus on home gardening projects, we at East Branch Organics find so much joy in sharing our knowledge, plants and products with veteran and rookie gardeners alike. 

One of my favorite things about the garden center is chatting with people about their gardens.  I love hearing what is working in your garden, what you dream about introducing to your plots or what you saw in a garden that you visited.  For this past year, we have been dreaming, mainly on Pinterest and by leafing through catalogs — and spring is the time to put our imaginations into action.  I love creating vision boards for my gardens in the winter and then seeing those dreams turn into reality as I start the yearly tasks that spring introduces.  Sometimes the spring tasks can seem daunting or mundane, but by imagining the future blossoms, fruit or vegetables that our work will translate to, it takes the toil out of it and makes it a lot more fun. 

As we kick off Spring 2021, let us know what you have been dreaming about for your garden.  Is there a particular plant that you have always wanted to try or one that you have just learned about that you are eager to experience?  Let us know and we will do our best to find what you are looking for.  We are looking forward to seeing you around the garden center!

Recognizing Our Essential Workers

As we enter March 2021, we are reminded that it’s been a year since the pandemic really started to shift our society and change the way we do business at East Branch Organics. Out of concern for our wellbeing, many of our customers and visitors have asked how we’ve been doing. We want to take a moment to express our gratitude to them and also to our staff who have been instrumental in getting us through these challenging times. Although there were many tough times, and we had to reconfigure how to do business on so many levels, we continued to grow and thrive during this past uncertain year. We want to highlight some of the amazing people on our team who have helped us this year, without whom we would not have been able to serve our wonderful clients and customers. These are the people who tend to and grow the plants that go into your gardens, who educate you on the best products to use to enhance your growing experience, who put together your online orders for contactless shopping, and who package orders for shipping. These are the people who enhance your outdoor living spaces so that you can enjoy your home while staying there safely. They create outdoor patios and walkways, they maintain your gardens and lawns, they plant fall bulbs for you to look forward to in the spring -- because we all need something beautiful to look forward to. These are the people behind the masks that greet you with a smile and make you feel comfortable with your decision to stop at our store. These are the people who have worked tirelessly, continuously, and joyfully all year to serve you. They are a talented bunch of people who bring so much to our team. Stay tuned to our story to get to know them a little bit better. Feel free to share any experiences that you may have had with them. We are so grateful for all that they do.

Planting Hope

In the fall of 2020, we planted perennials alongside our newly installed garden center driveway. This new driveway has been in the works for eight years, and after so many years of planning, designing and applying for permits for the new entrance, it was finally time to implement our plan! We worked with Ned Whitney and his amazing crew and now our customers, crews and delivery trucks are finally able to access the garden center from our new, more visible south entrance. Customers can still access the store from the original driveway as well. The new, double lane driveway will eliminate congestion in our single lane original entrance, and it will finally eliminate the need for delivery trucks to back down the driveway, creating traffic build up on Route 73.

While we were planting alongside the new driveway, a member of the community emailed regarding another matter and thanked us for “planting hope.” It struck me that gardening is for all intents and purposes an act of planting hope. Every time we purchase a new perennial, shrub, tree or annual, we are engaging in an act of hope for our future. Hope for the fruit it will bear. Hope for the shade it will bring. Hope for the color and the cheer that the colors will deliver. Hope for the deer to leave it alone. Hope for it to fill a bare spot. Gardening is a hopeful endeavor and one that we aspire to encourage in anyone who comes to our garden center. We all could use a little bit of hope in our lives, whether it is in the winter and we are looking at a limited color palette, in the spring when the early spring green leaves emerge, in the summer when friends and family visit or in the autumn when we are enjoying the harvests of our hard work. Our hope for you is that our plants, products and services continue to serve the hopes of all of our friends, patrons and clients.