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APRIL - Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays & Saturdays: 10am-4pm MAY - Monday-Friday: 9am-7pm Saturdays & Sundays: 9am-5pm We will not accept appointments by phone messages or Facebook messages. Please do not bring family or friends with you in the store. (They may book a time for themselves.) We strongly urge you to wear a mask. We will follow social distancing and safety measures. We know this is not ideal (trust us, nothing about this is ideal for us, either) but we are prioritizing the health of our employees and customers while still hoping everyone can enjoy the greenhouse. Hope to see you soon! Online Ordering and phone orders for pick up will continue until further notice. Click below to browse inside our greenhouse or place an online order.
 Click to download PDF. You may use this form to call in your pre-order at (937) 465-3717, or you may print it, fill it out, and scan it or take a picture of it and attach the pre-order form to an email to info@hillsidewestliberty.com. Thank you! *Easter Orders must be placed by Saturday, April 4th. Please call 937-465-3717 or email info@hillsidewestliberty.com to place Easter orders. Easter Orders will be available for pickup on 3 days: Wednesday, April 8th, 10am - 4pm Friday, April 10th, 10am - 4pm Saturday, April 11th, 10am - 4pm Please choose a time to pick up on these 3 days. We are limiting pick ups to 6 customers per 1/2 hour, so if your 1st choice of pick up time is already filled, you will be asked to select another pick up time for everyone's safety. Thank you for understanding.
*All employees will be taking safety precautions inside and outside the greenhouse, but please know it is impossible to eliminate all risk. Please consider seriously the risk involved to you and yours. *There can be absolutely no returns on any material this season due to COVID-19 concerns.  Click to download an Easter Order form. UPDATE!Online and phone orders are now available. Check it out here! As of March 28th, here is the current plan: I will not be opening the greenhouse for in-store shopping in April. I’m just not willing to compromise the health of our employees or customers. But I also understand that we need food and flowers in our lives, and fresh air, physical activity, and the hope that only gardening can bring.
With that in mind, we will be updating the website with order forms soon. The first form will be seeds, with Cole crops and other early offerings to follow soon, then perennials, etc. The greenhouses are full, and the plants are ready, so...as soon as we can get everything set up online and safety plans in place, we will start selling. Hopefully this will be ready by April 1st. More info. to follow as soon as I have it.  Hillside Greenhouse will be doing a FALL FLOWER Pre-Order Form! Read through the details and fill out the Pre-Order Form below to reserve your plants. We will contact you when your plants are in and ready to pick up.
Pre-Order Details<_
My dear husband is the water line guy, although I and an employee or two will probably put in some time. There is a special little tool called a punch tool for poking holes in tubing for drip lines (those hanging lines that water all the hanging baskets). Your hands are never quite the same after punching 500+ holes in thick water line tubing, let me tell you! And standing on a table reaching over head to measure and put in lines is a great shoulder workout. Getting a greenhouse ready for spring is better than a gym membership. I’m watching the snow fly out the window, thankful that this year’s soil delivery is in the books. It’s one of the single most stressful days of the year for me! Perhaps that’s because the first 2 years of soil delivery were ridiculous. I’ll give you the short versions… The first year, we were total newbies, no idea how all of this worked. We were told to rent a bobcat, that the truck was never late, and it would take a couple hours. So when the delivery was scheduled for early morning on the same day our son’s kindergarten Christmas program at West Liberty-Salem, we didn’t think about it being a conflict (foreshadowing here). Fast forward a good 4 hours of sitting in a cold greenhouse with nothing to do, repeated calls to the trucking company promising the shipment was somewhere between Cincinnati and West Liberty, and finally the truck shows up. I try to block out the rest of that day, but I have one of those indelible pictures in my head, the kind that you can recall on a seconds notice no matter where you are, of my husband driving this tiny bobcat up to thesemi-truck full of what seemed like 20 ft. pallets of soil. He had experience driving bobcats and forklifts, and assured me it would be no problem. The picture in my head is when he got the first pallet on the forks, backed away, and the bobcat promptly tipped forward and 45 bags of soil spilled and broke. It only got better from there. Let’s just say there were a lot of busted bags of soil, leaving a strange truck driver with rental equipment while we went to a Christmas program we couldn’t miss, flashing police lights on 68 where the helpful truck driver had dumped another pallet of soil while we were gone, a broken bobcat, and maybe some tears. The next year I was determined that it would be a better experience. I made arrangements for more help, and let the shipping company know the delivery had to be on time because I had rental equipment and the help for one day. This story includes the promised truck being a full day late, then using the wrong address, then attempting to turn around behind King’s Feed because the truck wouldn’t make it under the train tracks, the driver burying the semi-truck up to its front axle in the grass at King’s Feed (because why wouldn’t you go through the grass with tons of soil on your truck after a torrential rain the night before?). Luckily, the guys (and gal) at King’s are super nice and were willing to help us out. They ended up unloading everything there, and loading it back on our trucks to take to the greenhouses. Last year I decided to reach out to our friends at West Liberty Building & Supply Ltd.. With their help, everything went much smoother, and this year, year 4 of soil delivery, we got the job done with no stories to tell, or too many aches and pains to deal with. The moral of this story is that learning how to run a business takes patience, experience, and good friends and fellow businesses that will go out of their way to support you. Even when it seems like drudgery getting everything fixed and ready to go in January, the light is starting to appear at the end of the tunnel. Final orders are being placed, and plant shipments will be here in just about a month. I can hardly wait to get my hands in all that dirt! Alycia 
So on to the seasonal greenhouse biz in the off-season…first of all, no, we don’t sit around with our feet up waiting for spring to come. I had zero idea that for a greenhouse to be ready to go in spring (or really the end of winter, when planting starts), you have to get all your ducks in a row in July.
All of this adds up to hours and hours of research, looking at numbers (again, and again, and again), agonizing over decisions about what I can fit in the growing space and what it’s time to move away from. Running a small business is no joke, and I am thankful that I have the time in the summer to give these details my full attention. Then come August, it’s time to Order! All the plants we will grow in the spring are ordered by the time it’s time for kids to go back to school, and all the hard goods (the pots, the hoses, the gloves, etc.) are ordered by the time the leaves start to change colors. In a fun coincidence, this is also when all the holiday orders are due; I’m ordering geraniums in the morning, and picking out the right Christmas wreaths in the afternoon! Although it’s a bit stressful making all of these decisions, as the owner (and a control freak) I love it and wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s my business, so it had better be my booty on the line when it comes down to it!
So it’s April and it’s snowing, as I’m sure you’re all very well aware. Like many of you, I’m itching to get outside. My lawn needs rolled and mowed. I have a few shrubs and trees I’d like to put in the ground. The calendar tells me it’s time to be working outdoors or at least walking through the woods looking for mushrooms. BUT THIS WEATHER!
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OwnersHillside Greenhouse is located at 302 Zanesfield Rd. in West Liberty, OH, directly across from Marie's Candies. Alycia and Matt Brehm purchased Hillside Greenhouse in 2016, and are proud to carry on a long tradition. There has been a greenhouse business at this location for over 100 years ! In 2015 Alycia made a career change from teaching high school biology to make her life growing and selling plants. They live near West Liberty where Matt and his father also have a fish farm that raises yellow perch. They have two growing boys, and are excited to be a part of the growing small business community in West Liberty! Archives
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Phone: (937) 465-3717
(Available During Seasonal Business Hours) Email: info@hillsidewestliberty.com (Available Year-Round) Address: 302 Zanesfield Rd. West Liberty, Ohio 43357 (Located on St. Rt. 68, across from Marie's Candies) |
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West Liberty, Ohio |