Shopper’s Diary: Cult Store Gardenheir in the Catskills – Gardenista

Given that all we want from our gardens is that they be beautiful, it is somewhat ironic that the garden products sold in big stores often fall pitifully short on the aesthetic front. Endless plastic? Garish colors? Twee design? Guilty as charged.

So when we discovered Gardenheir, which began as an online store conceived by two avid gardeners before developing into a brand with two physical stores, it was an epiphany. Here, everything is beautiful, carefully considered, and curated—and, quite frankly, we wanted it all. We recently spoke to founders Alan Calpe and Christopher Crawford to get the lowdown on their gardening journey, their latest store in Windham, NY, and the Italian clogs they cannot keep on the shelves.

Like many new gardeners, the pair fell into gardening when they bought a cedar skate bungalow in the Catskills town of Windham. While renovating the house, they fell under the spell of the four acre blank canvas outside their door. “We knew very little about gardening when we got our place upstate, but it wasn’t long until it felt like all our thoughts and efforts were preoccupied with it,” says Alan, a visual artist who works mostly in video and performance, of their property. The pair has gradually reimagined the landscape by opening up views to distant mountains and creating a new curvaceous pond and flower-rich borders.

As their gardening addiction took hold, one thing became clear: The equipment they needed for the garden wasn’t in any way singing to these two creatives (Christopher has previously worked in fashion and retail). They also realized that there was probably a good number of fellow newbie gardeners who felt the same way. Their original online store pulls together the world’s most covetable garden brands—beautiful tools and equipment from Sneeboer and Haws, clothes from French brand Le Laboureur, and handmade items including the prettiest birdhouses with cedar shingles made by Richard Winkworth in England, German-made brutalist birdhouses, and beautiful bentwood pails made in Oregon. Alongside these wares, they’ve developed their own very desirable in-house collection of knitwear, jersey, smocks and accessories.