Less Than 5 Months Out: Growing Up in East Texas, Our Marshall Garden Company Story

Todd and Melisa, a few years before launching the Marshall Garden Company.

We are about five months out from opening the doors of the Marshall Garden Company, and if I'm honest, that number still catches us off guard every time we say it out loud. Five months. That's it.

After years of planning, dreaming, and a whole lot of dirt under our fingernails, it's finally close enough to touch. So before the countdown gets any shorter, we wanted to slow down and tell you how we actually got here. Not the business plan version. The real one.

It started on front porches

Melisa grew up in East Texas watching her grandmother grow the most remarkable planters right on her front porch. Nothing fancy. No greenhouse, no fancy equipment, just pots, a watering hose, and a woman who paid special attention to her plants. Todd grew up in East Texas hanging out with his grandparents, his parents and a family full of excellent gardeners who fed their families daily from amazing, robust kitchen gardens (before anyone ever gave those types of gardens such a fancy name). After a hard days work, the family sat in the rocking chairs on the porch and talked about their day.

That's the thing about growing up in here. Gardening was never a hobby you picked up from a magazine. It was passed down, at the kitchen table, on the porch, over the fence between yards. You learned what worked in this soil, in this heat, in this particular kind of humid summer, because somebody took the time to show you and let you be a part of it.

That's the spirit we're trying to carry forward with Marshall Garden Company. Not just a store, but a place that feels like that porch.

Why we're doing this

Todd and I didn't set out to open the Marshall Garden Company because it seemed like a smart business move on paper, though we've certainly done our homework on that front too. We're doing it because we kept meeting the same kind of person over and over. Curious, willing to try, ready to grow something, but looking for a place that would meet them right where they were, whether that was their first plant or their fiftieth.

We're building the Marshall Garden Company to to be that type of place. A place where it's okay to try whether it's your first plant or your fiftieth. Where asking a beginner question doesn't earn you a sideways look. Where the goal isn't just selling you a plant, it's helping you actually grow it. We keep meeting people who remind us that in a world full of craziness, agriculture, gardening... touching grass and dirt... growing something.... those are a few of the things that can help people feel a little less stress. And that's what we are setting out to do... one person, one plant, one porch at a time

Where things stand right now

With only five months to go, here's where we are. The land is coming together. The plans that lived in notebooks and spreadsheets for so long are turning into something you can walk across and point at. We're deep in the work that doesn't always make for exciting photos, building out our inventory systems, finalizing our vendor relationships, getting our bookkeeping and operations squared away so that when we open, we open right, not just fast.

It's a lot of unglamorous, behind-the-scenes work. But every bit of it is in service of the same goal, a garden center that's ready to actually take care of you from day one. It hasn't been easy and we didn't expect that, but we are faithful that it 1000% worth the work.

What's ahead for the Marshall Garden Company

Between now and opening day, we'll be sharing more of this journey with you, the wins, the hard lessons, and the honest look at what it takes to build something like this from the ground up. We're also planning some events between now and January so that we can get to know everyone better, and for our community to get to know us. It feels like I get to see and chat with so many folks online, but we want to be able to say howdy in person before January so I'm working on that.

This is a family business, built on a legacy that started long before either of us knew we'd end up here. We're proud of where we came from, and we're proud of where we're headed. Thank you for growing with us this far. There's a lot more ahead.

Proudly Rooted in East Texas.