Greg Pizzino was surprisingly understanding, considering that the Observer had just written that his store was closed. “My wife’s an editor and fact-checker at Crazy Wisdom Journal,” he explained, so he knows something about the risk of mistakes in publishing.
Ours was a bad one. A writer for our December 2016 Marketplace Chances column misunderstood a comment from Maple Village’s landlord to mean that English Gardens would close at the end of November 2016. Quite the contrary: the store’s lease, originally scheduled to end in January 2017, has been extended though August 2017. “We’ll have a full Christmas season,” says Pizzino, a department sales manager who’s filling in while his boss is on maternity leave, “and a full spring season as well.”
At the end of November, the store was filled with artificial Christmas trees, wreaths, and decorations, while the outdoor display area was stocked with fresh trees and greens. “We do a lot of custom work,” Pizzino points out—”a lot of the evergreen porch pots [are] going out now. Carol [Cordell] at the register was just finishing a tropical garden. Not a lot of places do that.”
We interviewed Pizzino between stands of blooming African violets and budding amaryllis. For a photo, though, he picks a spot in front of a custom-decorated Christmas tree, complete with a hint of a lakefront setting—”my boss did the tree and I built the dock,” he explains.
English Gardens, 155 N. Maple Rd. (Maple Village), 332-7900. Extended hours first three weeks of December: 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday. Christmas week: 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. (closed on Christmas). January hours: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. englishgardens.com
