Our courtyard garden is done. It turned out great! We have 4 statuaries for water fountains, 5 trees, a round concrete table and chairs, hundreds of plants , concrete paver pathway and grass. The patio is nice with plenty of space for tables and chairs. Only thing left is to build a roof cover over the patio.

We have brought in an additional $25,000 in of new Spring inventory that we ordered while in Dallas Texas. The shop looks better than any other time since I've owned the store. We re-set the entire store and opened up the new section. We added about 25% more floor space by opening the back room to the sales floor. Come and see our new offerings.

We opened our new space today. The bathroom is very modern, the new tile looks great, the red paint on the walls looks elegant. It is inspiring to take me on to the next stage. The two new spaces flow together well. I think we will remove some of the antiques and make more sitting space in front of the windows. It's all very exciting.

We have a new bathroom and an additional 250 sq ft of floor space. We opened the front of the store to the back room. We are putting in all new ceilings with recessed lights, new walls that hopefully will be painted this week and and all newly renovated handicap accessible bathroom. We will be putting down ceramic tiles on the floors so all the rooms will flow together. I'm happy to watch the transformation. It's all coming together one step at a time.

Our floral shop is being restored. We are getting ready by remodeling the bathroom and moving the back room supplies into better storage. We are opening the back room to the sales floor by opening the wall and joining the two rooms together.

We had the old galvanized metal fence removed and the new wooden fence is going to be installed next week in order to make a garden retreat in our court yard. I can envision several small tables where folks can sit under the umbrellas and visit and enjoy the beautiful surroundings. We hope to have it ready by this Spring.

11/30/2012
Today we interviewed an experienced florist who worked for Holly's Flowers for 5 years. She brings all around experience to the job. It's been hard to find experienced floral designers. We will give her a try and see how she does. Her name is Hailey.

Today's weather was warm out for this time of year. It was almost 60 degrees out. So surprisingly the asphalt company that I hired to pave alongside the storage sheds came early in the morning and finished the job. It looks great.

A finish carpenter came into the store looking to sell some furniture pieces that he had built, and even though I am not interested in buying his pieces, I hired him to build some shutters for the front windows. He will build one in his shop and then bring it by to see how it will looks. His name is Robert.

Monday November 26, 2012
Last night we drove to Spokane. We went to Mel's ( a nursery that specializes this time of year in Christmas trees and Decor). I took several pictures. They have 20,000 square feet of the most beautiful Christmas Decorations and home decor. it was very encouraging, and I am coming back with several great ideas that I would like to incorporate into our store. Today we went to a wholesale nursery and bought 20 very large assorted Poinsettias. They are gorgeous in 8" pots. We also bought about a dozen hanging plants. That area of our store is going to look great with all the new plants. Visiting the greenhouses at the start of winter is a real treat. It's like a different world in both places that we went to.

Introduction

November 24, 2012

Dear Friends,

This is Steve Dalke.  My wife; Sharon and I bought Nature Garden Florist and Gifts on October 1st of this year.  Nature Garden is in Milton-Freewater Oregon population of about 7,000.  Nature Garden has been in business since 1947 as a flower and gift shop.  As many of you know the florist business in general is down. People don't buy as many flowers as they used to.  In a recession they buy even less. 

So we have decided to try to diversify.  Floral shops tend to be a bit pricey in general and the gift items are usually high end.  We are trying to bring in more home decor items, antiques and shabby chic. I like to go to estate sales and buy items that can be made really cute by " distressing them and chicing them".  We hired Mike Remillard of  Elite Faux Painting fame to prepare our finds.  He does really good work and I would like to show some of them on this blog.  We would like to get the word out about our new inventory and of the changes we are making here at Nature Garden.