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!