Seeing green
Housed in a tumbledown Main St. building, Scott Zogelman’s gardening center has become a fixture of Florence
Staff writer
“Nobody else wanted it,” Scott Zogelman said of the building that for 13 years has held his gardening store, Zogie’s on Main.
The place is a strange one to be sure. Located on Florence’s Main St., it dates to the 1920s and has served over the years as the town’s first car dealership and the original Spur Ridge clinic.
The roof is mostly gone, and the parts that remain are in pieces. When heavy snow or high winds hit the city, there are worries more might break off.
There is not much of a floor to Zogie’s, either. Concrete slabs have given way to dirt formed from decades of cow dung and rotted leaves. In a back room, where Zogelman keeps fish tanks, two large mulberry trees grow from the floor.
“You can tell this roof’s been gone for 60 years, or else the trees wouldn’t be that big,” he said.
But dilapidated conditions are strangely perfect for a garden center. A small greenhouse built in the front room of the building feasts on the sun and open air. So, too, do dozens of plants and seedlings scattered around the place and just now starting to bloom.
Homemade filtration systems of plastic jugs and PVC pipe burble; butterflies and bees flock to miniature hydroponic tanks in late spring.
The deluge of overgrowth gives the feeling of a building at the end of the world, which nature has lovingly overrun.
“A lot of my customers who aren’t from the area, they come by and go, ‘Oh, did you have a fire here?’” Zogelman said.
Unsurprisingly, Zogelman, who can spend hours discussing the proper way to raise bubblegum petunias, was raised in the country.
He grew up on a farm between Florence, Burns, and Peabody, where his family raised pigs and he and his mother tended to a large garden.
His mother worked at a Florence greenhouse in her later years, and Zogelman eventually moved to town to help take care of her.
To supplement his work as a volunteer ambulance director, he began growing and selling tomatoes, peppers, and flowers in his mother’s backyard.
“I wasn’t working a full-time job anywhere else, so it was a way to get some money,” he said.
When his old building went up for sale in 2013, Zogelman saw a chance to expand his business.
“It’s got such charm to it,” he said.
Fifteen years on, Zogelman draws customers from as far away as Newton and Wichita with his wide variety of plants and years of experience.
They also come for Bert, an 11-year-old Hungarian Vizsla mix often spotted enjoying the sunny curb outside the shop.
Ernie, Bert’s German Shepherd compatriot, is long gone, but Bert is still around, his love of customers and of lapping up water set out for plants providing a calm presence to the space.
Zogelman once hand-dug a fish pond in his backyard, and at Zogie’s, he offers goldfish, butterfly koi, and aquatic plants to those with backyard ponds.
“I can’t sell fish for bait because of zebra mussels,” he said, referring to the invasive mollusk that has led to increased restrictions on fish-selling.
Zogelman’s fish are kept in kiddie-pool-size tanks hooked up to various tubes and biofilters. It is a thoughtful set-up; the goldfish lay eggs in breeder grass next to an intake tube, and the babies are sucked into another tank before they can be cannibalized by bigger fish.
“I’ve always liked fish,” he said.
Zogelman has been in a motorized wheelchair for a few years after a gut infection spread downward and led to amputation of his toes.
While he can walk for short intervals, the impairment has hindered his ability to improve and refine his space, something about which Zogelman often dreams aloud.
If he had the money, he’d put a glass roof on the front room and make it all a big greenhouse, with a more traditional gardening shop to the side. Fish tanks would stay in the back; ideally, they’d be a bit more protected from the elements.
“It’d be fun in the evening to have a patio back there, have a pit fire going,” he said. “We could roast hot dogs, have tea and Pepsi.”
Improving the building, with its ancient beauty and decay, feels like a project that would take lifetimes.
Money is an issue. Disability checks are Zogelman’s main form of income, and medical and electric bills eat up much of them.
Plans for the store are tempered by his need for investment.
“Those will only happen if money comes along,” he said. “If you average the year out, I still don’t make profit.”
Zogelman must pay for plants ahead of time. Despite the sprawl of his Main St. space, he doesn’t have the acreage nor the material to start everything from seed.
“I’ve got a bunch in my bedroom at home that are specialty, that I can’t get from a wholesaler,” he said.
Many of his plants freeze in winter or are damaged by his slipshod roof.
“I could live better if I didn’t have this,” he said, “because I reinvest everything I can.”
Yet running a garden store is clearly Zogelman’s calling. He personifies his knickknacks and plants — “That’s a water iris. He’s leafing out,” for example.
His tie-dye shirts shine brightly in early spring sunlight. Zogie’s store has become a community hub for Florence, a town desperately in need of gathering spots.
Bert trots around each morning, greeting postal workers; Zogelman calls out to passersby from across the street.
Florence’s famed motorcycle races see cyclists rumble through the building.
“It’s good for the town.” he said.
City history is reflected, too.
When Florence’s former ambulance building opened in 1981, someone donated a rubber plant, cuttings of which still grow in Zogie’s greenhouse.
“I just sold one the other day,” he said.
Indeed, stories of Zogie’s and Florence seem inexplicably linked. Both are eccentric spots, lit up with pockets of beauty.
“I don’t know if ever putting the roof back on this would be in the best interest of the building,” Zogelman mused. “It’d look so closed in. It would just look like a normal building.”
The future of both places depends on another generation.
Zogelman doesn’t have children. Local youth interested in biology have helped him out in the past, but that number has decreased over the years.
“It’s hard to find kids,” he said.
Secrets in his store still abound.
He’s only recently found a basement that had been covered with a thick layer of dirt and leaves.
Who knows what’s underneath? A golden goose? A new species of mushroom?
“I need to find some teenage kid who wants to dig for treasure,” Zogelman laughed.