Vigoro Nursery brings Christmas cheer

Vigoro Nursery owner Ms
Rohleder. “This Christmas
opening was our way of
saying ‘thank you’ to our
customers.”

The display delighted the eye and warmed the heart

Friday,  November 26, 2004

Cayman residents enjoyed a wonderful display of Christmas decorations and ornaments that delighted the eye and warmed the heart at Vigoro Nursery’s annual Christmas opening.

Nancy Rohleder, Nursery owner, said: “It’s our way of saying ‘thank you’ to our customers. I think this year we wanted to make it even more special because of what people have gone through.”

Confiding that the staff at Vigoro’s felt trepidation initially as to whether the annual opening should take place after the hurricane, concerned at the type of Christmas residents could look forward to this year, Ms Rohleder said that they finally decided to put in more effort than ever before to make the event even more meaningful and enjoyable. 

The opening has always been an event to mark in the diary, as, not only does it give customers the chance to enjoy and possibly purchase a new season of Christmas ornaments and decorations, it is well catered for, with food and drinks served throughout the evening, making for a sociable affair. 

Although Ms Rohleder said that sales were good for the evening it was much more about bringing people together to enjoy something wonderful to look at, for a change. 

Vigoro suffered damage during the storm, losing its roof and incurring some flood damage, but Nancy said they looked on the positive side and actually used the state of the building to their advantage.

She said: “We still have to repair our air conditioning units so our ceiling has yet to be replaced. We decided therefore to hang ornaments and branches from the exposed beams, which looked really effective. This would be considered very posh in an upscale nursery in the United States. Also, the aluminium a/c units added an extra touch of sparkle to the evening!”

Customers could be forgiven for assuming that the Nursery had been damaged even further than it actually had, as Ms Rohleder explained: “We have a good “disaster recovery plan”, whereby we lay all the plants on their sides before a storm. This prevents them being lifted by the wind. Thankfully we only incurred flooding from rainwater rather than salt water, so we were able to simply stand the plants up after the storm and they were relatively unscathed. However, if passers by had seen the Nursery straight after the storm they might have thought we had been hit badly, with the plants on their sides.”

Ms Rohleder added: “We are now waiting for a large shipment to arrive with lots of new plants, due here at the end of the month. This will only be our second container in six months, so we are very excited that we are again able to import plants from abroad.” 

In a heartening sign of rejuvenation, Ms Rohleder said that even those who had lost everything in the storm were happy to buy just one plant. 

She concluded: “The Island desperately needs plant material to get it green again and each and every plant makes all the difference.”

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