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Shades of Green Nursery on Sunset Road is transforming itself into a park.
Co-owner Bob Webster felt he could take a different path after 45 years in business. “We built this place literally from the ground up," he said. "We planted trees that were four or five feet tall when we planted them, that are 50 feet tall now. It's a basically a beautiful place. It's, in effect, a big garden."
He decided that it was time to imagine something different without losing the natural beauty to commercialism. He suspected any new owners would bulldoze the plants and trees. So he looked to a different future.
“We actually started the process physically three years ago when we placed the property under conservation easement," he explained. "It's an agreement between a land trust and a landowner that basically protects the property from development forever.”
Customers may visit Shades of Green through the end of the year before it is shut down for two years of construction.
When it reopens, it will be free to the public.
“We came up with the idea that we really wanted to leave a legacy. We wanted to leave something behind after the nursery days were done, and it just evolved into the idea of creating a public garden,” Webster added.
