Quackin Grass Nursery

Andrew, our assistant

ABOUT US

          A long driveway before me, a gravel snake descending, curving towards a potential new residence. On my left is an old, clearly historic stone wall. Its crest now uneven as stones through the decades had dislodged from its top - one here slipped, a couple farther down tumbled. Who or what felled them through strings of decades can be surmised, never known. A vast city of lichens, quiet, understated populated an ancient domain. Passing through the first barway I could see the stone wall ran parallel to a lengthy stretch of the road. Down another knoll and round a curve the gambrel-style barn demanded notice on the right. On the left across the drive from the barn is a mixed assortment of fruit trees, some clearly dead, black knot plaguing the prunus. Beyond the barn a short span of road arced then pointed to a second bar way; this one unusual in that it was two equidistant walls running northward in parallel My truck passed through both. The house on my left was tucked back from the drive. It was a modular single family dwelling planked in almond-colored T-111. I had fantasized about an old drafty farm house – one that might have had a ghost or two. Little did I know that the previous owner had died in the house. I think we may have met a few weeks later. What I did understand was that this house embodied much newer pipes and wiring. Repairing an old farmhouse would eat up volumes of time I would need to build a dream I had carried with me for some time. I would develop a nursery from the thoughts, ideas and concepts which played in my head for quite some time.

          Beyond the rear of the house lay a large flat area. I envisioned greenhouses back there. That old, funky orchard would be an excellent sales area across from the nursery’s retail heart, the handsome barn. The house set essentially between the barn and the imaginary greenhouses. I would live in the middle of the dream. Of all of the many properties I had considered this was the only one in which all the nursery sections passively fell into place. And my personal Magical Mystery Tour began...

          It was a millennial move. Severing ties with New York City, the final exodus in the final week of February of 2000. From the third-floor apartment between South 1^st and South 2^nd on Wythe Avenue from which the Williamsburg Bridge could be seen arcing over the East River. From a home in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn New York to a new home in Brooklyn Connecticut would come to pass. Having moved from Brooklyn to Brooklyn I told folks I chose Brooklyn Connecticut because I was so cheap that edits to my stationary must be minimal.

          In May of 2000 I opened with no staff, not a full complement of plants and with a combination of excitement, fear and worry swimming around and want to break the courage I had been tapping for many months to get to this moment. This go-round courage won as it usually did.

Additional Information

Lucille, matriarch of Quackin' Grass, with Pumpkin 'Galeuse d'Eysines'