Hallelujah! As of June 5, Southeastern PA has entered the Yellow Phase in Gov. Wolf’s COVID-19 reopening plan, and all Lawn and Garden Centers (among many other businesses) are allowed to re-open under several strict guidelines:
- Offering of curbside pickup in addition to continuing our delivery service
- Limited In-Store shopping (no more than 4 people at a time in the store)
- Limited Nursery Yard shopping (no more than 15 at a time in the yard)
- Face masks must be worn at all times (inside and outside)
- 6 ft. social distancing must be observed while shopping and checking out.
Thankfully, we are back in the Garden Center business finally. We’re thrilled that things are seemingly getting better with this awful virus, and hope that our nation can begin to heal and come together. We certainly appreciate the patience that all of you, our loyal customers over the years, have shown with our dilemma for the past almost-3 months. How do we run a seasonal business correctly when we’ve been told to close up shop until the threat has diminished? As a few of you communicated to us we put ‘people over profit’. The safety of our customers and staff was our first priority.
During the Yellow Phase of reopening, we’ll be continuing to offer home delivery (within our local shopping area), NEW curbside pickup for those of you who’d prefer to call orders in and then come by for us to load your cars, and LIMITED in-store shopping for Garden Center and Nursery Yard. We’ll deliver Monday through Saturday, and our store hours during the Yellow Phase will be: Monday through Saturday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. All orders taken over the phone (delivery and curb-side pickup) must be pre-paid by credit/debit card. Likewise, all Nursery Yard transactions at our new outside checkout station are credit/debit card only. In-store purchases may be paid for by cash, check or credit card. Again, we’re thrilled to be back in the retail Garden Center business, and we look forward to seeing all of you soon and often from here on.
All during this stay at home order our Turf Management team has been fortunate to continue with its normal spring application activities under the list of businesses permitted to continue physical operations. Currently, we are wrapping up the mid-spring applications of broadleaf weed control and are well into the late spring applications of fertilization and/or preventative grub control. Because we’ve got enough trucks in our Turf Management fleet, we’ve been able to operate with our 1-man crews and still have the necessary personnel to do all jobs correctly, under the social distancing guidelines. We’ve been thrilled that during this stressful time this spring, we’ve continued receiving estimate requests for regular and special applications. We want to mention again that any of you who are not yet Lawn Depot Turf Management customers and might entertain the thought of using our services, we’re still doing free estimates and emailing quotes within several days. We can supplement what you do yourselves (liming, core aerating, weed control) or take over with the normal schedule of applications. Please call (215-348-5553) or look us up on the web (www.lawnsepotinc.com).
June is still a VERY active time in yard and garden maintenance, and we hope you’ve all had plenty of time to be out working in your yards regularly. Personally, since I’m not much of an indoors guy, I’ve been thrilled to be able to be out regularly, mowing our home lawn and the lawns at the Depot, and doing regular gardening and weeding chores at home. It has really been a great spring weather-wise too; on the cool side, with several late overnight frosts well into May, and a bit short on the cumulative rainfall thus far, but lawns and gardens have really looked magnificent all spring. The cooler weather has kept blooms on bulbs and flowering trees and shrubs forever, and there’s been enough rain to allow us to have dews every night which, in turn keeps all plants growing nicely. There are still things to do on lawns and in beds and other plantings before we get to the less desirable weather conditions of summer. And there’s still time for planting perennials and up-sized annuals that will add beautiful color to your yards and pool yards all summer. So, we hope to see all of you out and about (safely) and that you’ll visit us at the Lawn Depot often in the coming months.
Bob Button