Greenscape Gardens Green Blog

GREENSCAPE GARDENS IN THE NEWS

GardenCenter Magazine February 2010

The following article was excerpted from gardencenter magazine which is a trade journal targeting garden centers. The article was titled "Composting goes in-house.

Composting---if its good for home gardeners, it's got to be good for garden centers. That's the attitude more stores are taking these days as they strive to practice what they preach. Retailers across the country are setting up in-house composting stations to bring eco-friendly practices closer to home base.

"We have a lot of green material that we have to separate from our other recyclables as well as our waste materials," said Jennifer Schamber with Greenscape Gardens & Gifts in Manchester, MO. "We can't compost all of it on site, so we have a separate yard-waste container that gets picked up weekly and is composted off-site. We have chickens---and therefore, a lot of good $#!+---pardon the language!----so we have a large concrete block bin in the back that we use to compost our chicken poop and other easily compostable yard wastes."

Note: The article also had a picture of the "almost famous" chicken coop.

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Jodie Bross, owner of Glenwild Garden Center, in Bloomingdale, N.J., said her store is solidly aboard the composting bandwagon. The company has a landscape division, and a lot of the compost ends up being used on projects.

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At the store, they have a rough brush pile where employees toss things that take a while to break down---like dead annuals and perennials. The compost produced here will often end up enriching the store's display gardens.

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"Inside at our work areas we have separate waste cans for when we're cleaning inside---plant leaves, etc---and [containers for] veggie lunch scraps," said Bross. "We don't enforce the lunch scraps--it's just for the people who think of it and know it isn't too smelly and messy. Lots of coffee grounds, of course!"

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Are you doing in house composting? Join the conversation in our forum at Garden Center Magazine.com.

"Take note customers: We've been preaching about composting for 16 years and we practice what we preach. For the last year Greenscape Gardens has been recognized monthly by at least one of the trade journals for our industry. Hey.....

we're the neighborhood family owned garden center that is NATIONALY KNOWN.

Thank you for your patronage and with spring "hopefully" approaching, we'll be seeing you soon.