Growing excitement

ROYAL CITY — It takes a little work to get to Seed Cupboard Nursery, a mile or so west of Royal City. Every year though, lots of people think it’s worth the drive.

We draw from around the entire community,” said Seed Cupboard owner Lisa Villegas. “From down in Desert Aire, Mattawa, they drive from Ellensburg, a small group from Wenatchee, Quincy, Ephrata, a lot of people from Moses and Othello. So we’re kind of in the center. We’re not in just one of those locations, so we’re fortunate to have really loyal customers that come from all of those locations and support us.”

Seed Cupboard, which opened for the year on Wednesday, is in its eleventh year of business, Villegas said. It started in a small red barn and one greenhouse, as Villegas’ retirement project, but that small scale didn’t last for long, she said.

“We were fortunate enough to have our business kind of explode,” she said.

A couple of years later, Villegas added a food truck, dubbed the Garden Grill, which serves breakfast and sandwiches. Next came a much larger barn to accommodate the seeds, gardening supplies, décor and even wine and cheese that have rounded out Seed Cupboard’s offerings.

“The customers are amazing,” said Peri Williamson, who is in her fifth year working at Seed Cupboard. “Some of them come out and spend three hours here.”

The newest addition is a tree lot out back of the barn, which holds about 1,000 trees on two acres.

“We carry everything from ... maple shade trees to the beautiful hydrangea patio trees that stay small.”

The trees are grown using drip irrigation and a pot-in-pot system that helps them stay upright in the wind, which is no mean feat in the Columbia Basin.

Of course, the nursery plants are the big draw. Seed Cupboard grows 400-500 hanging baskets a year, Villegas said. One warehouse is devoted to Proven Winners, which Villegas describes as the Cadillac of plant brands.

“I was always like, well, are they really worth it? I actually did a little test on some of our favorite varieties up against the Proven Winners, and everybody agreed that Proven Winners were head and shoulders above the other varieties.”

Petunias, of whatever variety, are a popular thing at Seed Cupboard.

“They’re super, super easy to grow,” Villegas said. “We try to grow a lot of self-cleaning petunias. They’re maintenance-free, pretty much. You plant them, you water them and you feed them and that’s about all you have to do. We carry the basic ones. too. But we’re more known for carrying the premium petunias that don’t take all their work.”

Where there are plants, there are going to have to be pots, and Seed Cupboard has a good share of them too, as well as garden statuary.

“The statuary comes from a company, I think, out of Las Vegas,” Villegas said, “but the pottery is almost all Vietnamese. That’s the best pottery for our area because it’s fired at high temperatures so it’s not gonna break in the winter.”

Seed Cupboard has nine people on staff, Villegas said, all part-time. It’s a pretty physical job, she explained, with which Williamson agreed.

“The atmosphere is amazing,” Williamson said. “It gets strenuous at times, though. Like when you have to put plants out and it’s 100 degrees and everybody’s got those big hats on. It’s never dull. There’s something new every day.”

Seed Cupboard will be open until just before Christmas, Villegas said. The nursery hosts a number of events during the year, including a garden party the last weekend in April and a Holly Jolly just before Christmas, which includes a visit from Santa. And this weekend Seed Cupboard will be sponsoring the Columbia Basin Home and Garden Show at the Grant County Fairgrounds, with almost 70 vendors.

“Being in this business, there’s always people that are looking for this or looking for that,” Villegas said. “And we’ve discovered so many new businesses since we started doing it that we didn’t know were here. So we’re excited about that. We think it’ll be a great community-type thing.”

Joel Martin can be reached via email at jmartin@columbiabasinherald.com.