Originally started as a catalog mail-order company, Gardener’s Supply has long been committed to sustainability for its employees, customers, communities, and our planet.
Each spring, I plant my garden with gusto—perhaps the singular gusto of a Vermonter bearing the pale skin and vitamin D deficiency of a long winter, and the mud-spattered boots of “spring.”
After the joy of my planting frenzy, however, I’m left to reckon with the dozens of little black plastic pots left in my wake. Likely you know the type all too well–—the ubiquitous, single-use plastic containers that plant starts come in. And, if you’re like me, you sigh and stack them up—you’ll find a use for them, surely—only to side-eye the little annoyances with guilt for months, or years.
However, if you stop by a Gardener’s Supply Garden Center on a certain Saturday in June, you’ll witness a heartwarming sight: people lined up with stacks of black plastic plant pots, waiting to recycle them.
Plastic Pot Take-Back Day, during which people can bring their #2 and #5 plastic pots (from any gardening store) to be sent back to the vendor and turned into new horticultural pots, has become an annual tradition. “People get really excited for it,” says Kim Dvorak, Gardener’s Supply Company’s retail operations manager. “They have been saving their pots for years—some since the ’70s and ’80s.” The event takes place at all six of Gardener’s Supply’s locations (Burlington, Williston, or Shelburne in Vermont, Lebanon or Greenland in New Hampshire, or Hadley, Massachusetts) and has led to 59 pallets of plastic nursery pots diverted from landfills since 2021. It is emblematic of Gardener’s Supply, and the ethos of community, care, and continuous improvement it’s been honing since 1983.
Originally started as a catalog mail-order company, Gardener’s Supply has long been committed to sustainability for its employees, customers, communities, and our planet.
The company is 100 percent employee-owned, meaning everyone earns stock and shares in company profits as part of an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, or ESOP. “As far as company culture, there’s a huge amount of empowerment,” says Shawn Christianson, Gardener’s Supply’s director of marketing. “We get to be part of the process and are much more bought-in as a result. We want the business to do well because we all benefit and because that drives our positive impact in the world and in our local communities.”
The company’s model and values have led to great longevity among employees, some of whom have been there for more than 30 years. Gardener’s Supply also prioritizes employee well-being through benefits such as gardening beds for employee use and 8 hours paid time off per year that employees can use to support causes they care about. When it comes to their customers, Gardener’s Supply creates high-quality products and offers outstanding customer service, as demonstrated by their products’ lifetime guarantee. The company has been designing and crafting their exclusive gardening supplies, from signature cedar garden beds to lifetime aluminum corners for raised bed building, for decades, many at their factory in Georgia, just north of Burlington.
“Our founder Will Raap had a vision for not only making gardening accessible to more people, but also creating innovative solutions to help people garden longer,” Shawn says. Accessible products such as their ergonomic shovels and raised beds for wheelchair users have long been a draw, along with new product lines. Last year, they released two- and three-tier folding grow shelves, which enable gardeners to start seeds and then tuck them away the rest of the year, as well as their natural pest-protection chicken wire line. And, they pay attention to customer feedback, improving existing products and introducing new ones based on what they hear.
Northeasterners can enter gardener paradise by visiting one of their six locations. Their full line of gardening beds, tools, and proprietary products are also available in their online store, to customers across the country. “A lot of people look to their local garden center to get answers to general questions they have about their garden, not just products. ‘My hydrangea isn’t blooming!’ ‘How do I prune my apple tree?’” Kim tells me. “We really will try to answer any question a customer has.”
The company is dedicated to sustaining local communities in myriad ways, including hosting classes, promoting pollinator habitats, and a commitment, since 1985, to giving 8 percent of their annual profits to organizations “using gardening and local food production as a force for good.” Recently, they have been spotlighting the work of Frontline Gardens, a nonprofit that brings therapeutic gardening to veterans and first responders.
Gardener’s Supply has also had a longtime partnership with the Intervale Center, a one-of-a-kind farm and food systems organization located along the Winooski River—as well as the location of their Burlington Garden Center. When Will Raap moved Gardener’s Supply to the neglected Intervale in 1986, they cleared 1,000 tires and 350 abandoned cars, kickstarting the area’s revitalization—and exhibiting a visionary and hopeful outlook that is still at the heart of Gardener’s Supply’s work today.
Shawn says, “We’re building things that are meant to last, out of metal when we can, instead of plastic. Ultimately, we’re controlling our own destiny by bringing forward products that are going to have a positive impact both in people’s lives and in the world longer term.”
