New garden center

There is a new garden center that opened up recently just three miles away from me! I can see it now, the convenient location is going to get me into trouble. It’s called The Garden Lodge. The grand opening was a month ago and I dutifully went to check the place out.



The interior is set up like a house, albeit a very large house, broken down into rooms complete with furniture, decorations, wall art, candles, and lots of floral arrangements. Lots and lots of great ideas and inspiration.

There is a horticultural library where you can sit in these big comfy sofas and over-stuffed wing backed chairs and browse to your hearts content. They also offer design services and community education classes.

Attached to the back of the building is a very large greenhouse (10,000+ square feet) that they promise they will carry anything you could possibly want for your yard and garden. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much of anything there except for a few annuals and trees.



Walk out of the greenhouse and you step into what looks like several planned gardens. This area is as yet unfinished also and in fact they only have a few of the hardscape features in place.





It seems a bit odd that they would have a ‘grand opening’ without having everything ready for it. I haven’t heard any of the usual rumors about what the hold up is and the people who work there could only tell me that they are a bit behind schedule. Perhaps labor problems? I don’t know, but the place has a lot of potential and I hope they can pull it off.

Before they put their sign up and opened their doors there was a lot of speculation about what the place was going to be. There was no advertising until the day they opened and that was an ad in the city local newspaper. It all seemed a bit hush hush. Very strange way to do things for a retailer.

The only thing that hinted at it being something to do with gardening was the large greenhouse attached to the back of the building but all that was there was the glass structure and lots of construction debris.

Even now a month later it seems they are dragging their feet. I can’t wait to walk through their gardens. I like the idea of seeing combinations of plants actually planted much like a Home and Garden show instead of just rows of potted plants.