Our History
Established in 1982, Countryside Greenhouse was originally built as a small wholesale operation. At that time it was just a single hoop style greenhouse. Initially our owners grew just a very basic plant listing of Spikes, Sprengeri, and Vinca Vine. However, it was not long before both the plant listing and the facility were growing.
Picture Taken in 1986
Neighbors began to stop by and inquire about purchashing plants directly from the small farm. This led our owners to establish a small direct market operation to run alongside the wholesale facility, including the first gravel parking lot pictured below.
Picture Taken in 1990
As the business progressed, Countryside’s ownership continued to upgrade the facility. The first major upgrades were the construction of a larger production greenhouse and a glass covered range (being constructed in the photo below). This range was designed as an ideal environment for propagating plant material, and is still utilized today. Propagating much of our own material is one of the reasons we are able to grow for less and sell such beautiful product at a low price.
Picture Taken in 1997
The late 1990's were prosperous and Countryside Greenhouse underwent some major growth (construction pictured below). The increased production space allowed for higher volume purchasing of raw materials and helped to drive prices even lower on both ends of the business.
Picture Taken in 2001
In 2004, our owners faced a tough decision. The business was doing well both in the wholesale division as well as in the direct market division. Pressure was being applied on the wholesale end of the business to begin selling our product on a strictly scan-based system, and our ownership was uncomfortable with some of the risks this created. If we were going to be sending our product out to garden centers and only being paid for it when the final customer bought it, why not just sell it all out of our own front door to the final customer? We decided to focus solely on the direct market side of our greenhouse while still incorporating fundamentals we perfected in our wholesale department.
Countryside Greenhouse took on a huge expansion project in the summer of 2004 and all of our energy became focused on servicing the direct market customer with the highest quality plants at the lowest possible price.
Picture Taken in 2004
Unfortunately, it took until the following summer to finish the parking lot.
Picture Taken in 2006
It took several years of focusing our energy on being a direct market before we started to get the hang of things. There have been many challenges with the check out system, the parking structure, balancing our direct market display and production space, and many more.
By 2009 we felt confident that we were starting to get enough of a handle on the business that we decided to demolish our original hoop greenhouse and construct a new gutter connected range in its place.
We are now reaching the limits of what Countryside Greenhouse can do at the Pingree Street location. Even though we have had success, we are still striving to improve our business to serve our customer’s needs. We’d like to add new departments to the business, improve our check out process, build adequate parking, and make the overall Countryside Greenhouse experience much better.
It has been a long journey, and a lot of hard work already, but we are actively pursuing the next step in making Countryside Greenhouse an even better experience.