Driving down Route 6 near Pugwash, N.S., a large sign announces Coastal Gardens, although you can’t see the nursery from the road. That’s part of its charm. Turn up a gravel road, and suddenly you’re in a blooming paradise. Five greenhouses cluster around landscaping trees and shrubs, and Danielle VanDalen appears from the modest sales shed with a warm smile. You’ve found a gardening jewel on the Sunrise Trail.
Danielle and husband Philip Sprague met at Olds College in Alberta. He was in the arboriculture program, and she was in horticulture. They came to Nova Scotia for her practicum, which included a stint at Fox Harb’r resort, and while here they bought a parcel of some 66 hectares of land. They returned to Alberta to finish their education, then came back to Fox Harb’r to work and begin clearing acreage for a nursery.
“We didn’t have electricity or anything, just one little homemade greenhouse and a pond,” Danielle says. “And while we were building that greenhouse with plans to start growing plants, we discovered we were also growing our own family.” Daughter Allanya has just turned 14, and that’s how her parents keep track of how long the nursery has been operating.
Coastal Gardens looks very different from those halcyon days. There are now five greenhouses, 511 square metres of growing space, plus the home that Danielle and Philip built for their family. “We’re always looking for more growing area even at the same time that we keep saying, ‘No more!’” Danielle says. A recent grant from the Indigenous Business Development program allowed them to put up that fifth greenhouse and install an automated irrigation system to increase propagation at the nursery.
“We don’t specialize in any one thing, but we do focus on salt-tolerant and deer-resistant plants,” Danielle says. “Our local customers are always looking for those sorts of plants because, of course, we have the ocean right there and deer are such a bother for so many.”
A lot of local people are “meat and potatoes” gardeners, so Danielle has plenty of standard annual bedding plants and vegetable garden transplants for her regulars. She also grows more unusual varieties which she mostly sells at the Pugwash Farmers’ Market weekly. She adds that with the nursery’s customer base expanding to Halifax, Moncton, Truro, and beyond, they’re getting requests for different types of plants, “like heritage tomatoes, unusual herbs such as lemongrass, stevia, curry plants,” along with the staples. “I have to grow what people want. Although there is more of a demand for heirloom varieties of tomatoes, the favourite tomato for locals is still the Scotia.”
Because Danielle sells at the market, with Allayna’s help, she has gained a widespread fanbase. “We’re not from here. We were brand new to the area and that can make opening a business a little bit hard. Plus, because you can’t see the nursery from the road, there were rumours and questions about us, ‘What are two young kids doing growing stuff in the woods?’” she laughs. “When we started, the market was also new with local customers and vendors, and it folded us into the community. Now it’s a highlight of our property that you can’t see us from the road. We’re a hidden gem.”
Living beside the nursery can mean it’s hard to leave work at the end of the day, but they close the gate on their driveway. The greenhouses mean Danielle and Philip can protect their plants during the uncertain weather of mid to late spring, and don’t have to rush out with frost blankets when temperatures dip. They were lucky during hurricane Fiona, too, as the only damage was to that first hand-built greenhouse from 2010, which Danielle had planned to demolish at the end of the season. “Fiona got here first!”
Geraniums are their most popular annual flowering plant. “There are some gorgeous varieties out there, the striped ones and the scented ones, as well as the faithful standards,” Danielle says. She grows some petunias, but her neighbour Ken Lander down the road at Sunrise Greenhouses has developed several popular varieties for the business Proven Winners, so she doesn’t wish to step on his petunia expertise.
Because Danielle and Philip produce most of their annuals and perennials from seeds and plugs (tiny plants shipped in from huge production nurseries), they can keep prices competitive. Their main garden centre competition in the area is the big-box stores, where temporary greenhouses sell plants at a loss to attract customers.
Danielle has been quietly teaching people that they don’t have to stop planting when the box stores close their garden centres in early summer. “We also stay open until into October, weather permitting, and that helps people to learn that yes, you can plant into the fall. The plants are full and healthy, the soil is warm, so new perennials and so on will root in and settle very well, and you can have a beautiful garden all summer and into autumn.”
Customer service is a huge facet of the business. While she doesn’t do private landscape consulting anymore because of time constraints, Danielle will help gardeners who come with photos and drawings. “What is your goal in gardening? Where do you spend the most time in your yard? Do you want something long blooming or some fragrant bloomers, or an edible garden of flowers, herbs and vegetables?” She says that she finds a lot of what she does in offering gardening help is mediation, almost like couples’ therapy. “One partner is concerned about what it will look like, the other is concerned about maintenance, or they want a neighbour-friendly barrier hedge, or a thriving bountiful vegetable garden. There’s always compromise.”
Danielle doesn’t have a single favourite perennial. “Whatever is in front of me flowering at the moment,” she laughs. “People ask what’s the prettiest, or what is the best, but they all have so much use. They can blend into the landscape, many are beneficial to pollinators, they can be used to help stabilize banks, some of them are so fragrant, so it’s hard to pick just one.” She likes echinaceas, which bloom long and offer many varieties and colours, and the hummingbird-attracting crocosmias, with their arching stems of scarlet flowers. And while she grows deer-resistant plants, she stresses that nothing is deer-proof. “They’ll try anything if they’re hungry.”
While COVID hurt many small businesses, nurseries like Coastal thrived. “Because we could be safely open, we stopped working offsite and focused primarily on the nursery. We started growing a lot of smaller plants, vegetable production, blueberries, raspberries, and other edibles, and people came because it was a safe space for them to be, outdoors among plants. Business bloomed.”
It’s possible that visitors to the nursery in high season may meet a living gnome, a giant bumblebee or hummingbird, or a diver in full wetsuit. Danielle says, “Our marketing is not the best because we spend most of our time on production, but I can dress up and act like a fool which entertains our customers. So, we’ve had a lot of our growth via word of mouth because we’re honest and straightforward, we want people to have a great experience with what they’re doing in their gardens. If the demand continues to grow, we will continue to grow.”