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.