Gardeners hope gift shop blooms

Epic 12 Hour Race Photo:

Pam Harnden/Franklin Journal
Brandon Thompson, left, and Zach Veayo of Farmington recently competed in the Junior Division of the epic 12-hour race during the Fat Tire Festival, held in Presque Isle. They received blue ribbons for completing the race.

PARIS — A new gift shop is about to open at McLaughlin Garden, a sign of incoming director Ruth Copeland's efforts to take the organization to a new level of prominence within the community.

Copeland, who joined the organization earlier this year, says that the new shop is a tangible way for the garden to reach out to the local community.

Many gift shops that are adjunct to larger attractions quickly become known as sinkholes for tourist dollars, featuring high-priced, mass-produced items from factories around the world.

Copeland's vision for the McLaughlin Garden Gift Shop is something different. When building inventory for the shop, she worked with the Maine Craftsman Association to identify Maine-made products.

"You can't find any of this stuff in Target or Walmart," said Copeland.

In fact, about 80 percent of the items on offer have been made in Maine. Copeland says that before deciding on a direction she toured local businesses and found an unfilled niche in the gardening items for sale.

"We have great garden supply centers, but I didn't find any of the fun, whimsical stuff," she said. "Things like interestingly-shaped birdbaths, or ceramic lawn decorations."

Another difference between McLaughlin's gift shop and the typical gift shop is price.

"It will be priced lower," said Copeland. "It is targeted to locals. If we don't serve locals, we're not meeting our mission and we won't survive."

She says that she established a ceiling of about $50 for an item, with lots of things in the $10 range.

"We're really trying to keep thing affordable. The tourists are the cherry on the sundae," said Copeland.

Copeland hopes that a gift basket from McLaughlin gardens will become an iconic item on offer in the Oxford Hills area. The five-dollar gifting set includes a wooden basket with a chalkboard front, a piece of chalk, and decorative ribbon and paper.

The stakes for the success of the gift shop are high, both for the garden, and for the community at large.

Right now, the garden subsists almost entirely on private donations. Even the gift shop is getting off the ground with donations of shelving and furniture items from the Maine Bucket Company in Lewiston, and the hard work of volunteer Warren DeCoster, a carpenter who has put in nine days of work (and counting).

Copeland, who until recently worked at the McDowell Sonoran Preserve in Arizona, says that the time has come for the garden to come into line with the business model of other, larger botanical preserves.

At a typical botanical preserve, a gift shop will generate about a third of the institution's revenues, with the balance being split between admission fees and donations or grants.

McLaughlin charges no admission price, and has not relied on retail sales. That business model led to visits from 12,000 people last year, but the garden doesn't benefit from the traffic flow.

Copeland says that the community has a stake in the garden, because she is trying to transform it into a self-sufficient entity that can serve as an economic engine for the area.

If the gift shop does well, the organization can not only maintain a full free-access policy, but it can also begin to do outreach projects by helping to create more beautified spots within the area, and conducting education programs.

"Not having a gate fee is a conscious decision, and it's one that is difficult to make," said Copeland.

In the long run, Copeland says she would like to see the organization acquire adjacent land to expand the gardens, and convert the original house into a full-time educational center.

The garden has a lot riding on the success of the gift shop. In order to take in 30 percent to 40 percent of its annual revenues, "that's selling a lot of five dollar baskets," said Copeland.

Right now, the boom-and-bust nature of donations, combined with a couple of bad coincidences last year, have made things tight for the garden.

Last year, the lilacs bloomed and died before the organization's planned lilac festival, rendering it "kind of a bust," said Copeland. It also rained on Mother's Day, which dampened wildflower sales on that day.

"We take in all of our money over the summer, and work all winter preparing for the spring," said Copeland. "We run out of funds in spring, when they're most needed."

Coming from the large, 57-acre Arizonan Preserve to the tiny rural garden was an easy decision to make, said Copeland.

"People don't realize it, but McLaughlin is a special place," she said. "It's a gardener's garden. It's not there because of science, or money. It's there because someone loved plants."

The garden began in 1936, when resident Bernard McLaughlin began to plant on the land. He welcomed community members to visit, and gained notoriety for his taste and successful plantings, despite a lack of formal training. By the time he died in 1995, at the age of 98, he was known as the "Dean of Maine Gardeners."

Copeland notes that Kristen Perry, the group's horticulturalist, also came from a larger institution, the Chicago Botanical Garden.

"We're doing it because it's actually a special garden," said Copeland. "Small rural places like this deserve special places, too."