Three Seasons Garden Store: A local landscaping business expands to retail | The Harvard Press | Features | Feature Articles
20 many years immediately after Mike Hood launched A few Seasons Landscaping with his brother, Tim, he understood it was previous time to obtain new headquarters for an at any time-increasing landscape organization and to notice his extensive-phrase approach of opening a retail shop. A 2½-acre piece of the previous Callahan property, 264 Ayer Street, introduced by itself in 2020 as the excellent answer, he explained. And with Tim acquiring moved out of point out, Mike brought one more brother, Rob, on board to take care of Three Seasons Back garden Keep and the landscaping business enterprise.
The commercially zoned assets took lengthier to discover than he’d have desired, Mike explained, but retaining the company in Harvard was a precedence, offered his family’s ties to the town and the loyalty he reported his Harvard prospects have persistently shown.
Mike Hood (remaining) and Rob Hood stand in front of a Blackstone Candle exhibit at Three Seasons Backyard Retailer. (Image by Thomas Kilian)
Mike, Rob, and their 4 siblings all grew up on Outdated Mill Highway immediately after their dad and mom moved there 47 decades in the past. Their dad, Bob Hood, sent the mail in town for 25 many years, and their maternal grandmother, Rita Lombardi, was celebrated at the 2018 Town Meeting as the town’s oldest resident. She died at household in 2021 at the age of 102.
Seeking back and reflecting on her sons’ accomplishment, Peggy Hood explained to the Push she was not astonished when her outside-loving sons Mike and Tim took up landscaping as a occupation. For the duration of their youth, she’d line up out of doors initiatives for them at their Grandfather Lombardi’s spot in Clinton. He was an engineer by career, but in retirement concentrated on meticulous garden and stone get the job done. “He was exacting and taught them a great deal,” she said. To this day, she mentioned, “Mike prefers to be out and about.”
Rob, as well, is well suited to his present-day function in the Three Seasons business, handling the office and stock at the retail store and creating up proposals for landscaping shoppers. He “always liked textbooks and is very sensible … they are a excellent match for the business enterprise,” Peggy mentioned.
The retail organization commenced with the sale of mums on the store’s garden in 2020, while the shop alone opened in the spring of 2021—after the former storage constructing had been renovated. It was paneled in knotty pine milled at a Hubbardston lumber mill, and the partitions have been adorned with antique farm implements that the Hoods found in an previous barn on the house. Involving 2021 and 2022, inventory at the store steadily greater. These days, the store carries yard tools of all varieties flower pots grass seed, backyard garden soil, and soil amendments and present objects, like Blackstone candles and diminutive, handmade present baggage. Seasonal things this kind of as bushes and flowering plants mulch, pumpkins, and hay bales and Xmas trees, wreaths, and arrangements make appearances all through the months the retail outlet is open, which are April 1 by way of Xmas.
Reflecting on the previous 12 months, Mike says he has experienced the most enjoyable promoting Christmas trees, and if he experienced to choose a preferred product, he’d go with the Jonathan Inexperienced grass seed, which he swears by. The opening next year of a different back garden heart on Ayer Road—just as the keep gains steam—has equally Rob and Mike determined to maintain increasing 3 Seasons. Upcoming year, for instance, Mike programs to expand the inventory to involve wild hen materials, perennials, seeds, natural double-floor mulch, stone, and significant-end out of doors fireplace techniques from Montana Fire Pits.