Urban Garden Center — Attraction in New York

Beneath rumbling Metro North tracks in East Harlem lies an unlikely horticultural haven that has defied urban logic for six decades.

Urban Garden Center occupies 20,000 square feet of dead space under the Park Avenue viaduct. Here, amid industrial din, the Gatanas family has cultivated a peculiar New York success story—one revealing both immigrant entrepreneurship's resilience and a business struggling to modernize.

The story begins in 1959, when Greek immigrants Dimitri and Calliope Gravanis opened their first garden shop on Madison Avenue. Their daughter Aspasia watched the business migrate through Manhattan before her sons discovered the current location in 2010, rechristening it Urban Garden Center.

What emerged defies retail wisdom. Customers navigate between freight trains overhead and flowering displays below, creating what one visitor called a "whimsical contradiction." The setting is undeniably New York: gritty, improvised, somehow beautiful.

The business model reflects similar pragmatism. Beyond traditional nursery fare, Urban Garden Center manufactures custom cedar planters, delivers kiln-dried firewood through "Firewood 2 Go," and operates what it claims is the largest Christmas tree operation between the Upper East Side and Harlem. The family diversified into landscaping services targeting Manhattan's space-starved gardening enthusiasts.

Their timing proved prescient. As urban gardening surged during the pandemic, demand exploded. The center serves everyone from apartment dwellers nursing windowsill herbs to community gardens seeking bulk supplies. Staff—often family—dispense advice with generational authority. Customers praise knowledgeable service, citing complimentary soil for repotting as emblematic of the family's generosity.

Yet success exposed operational vulnerabilities. Online reviews reveal a business straining under popularity. Customer service complaints mounted, particularly around delivery logistics. One Better Business Bureau review details an 11-day ordeal involving 20 unanswered phone calls and two missed delivery windows. Other customers report inconsistent plant quality and pest problems suggesting inventory management challenges.

The disconnect appears generational. While horticultural expertise remains unquestioned, customer service infrastructure hasn't scaled with demand. The business maintains multiple websites with confusing navigation, and phone communications receive consistent criticism.

These growing pains reflect broader tensions facing family businesses in gentrifying neighborhoods. Urban Garden Center serves both longtime East Harlem residents and newer arrivals with different service expectations. The company's environmental focus—off-site composting, organic products—appeals to sustainability-conscious consumers, but operational execution often falls short.

Despite challenges, Urban Garden Center maintains fierce loyalty. Many reviews read like love letters to a neighborhood institution. The business enjoys robust social media engagement with nearly 19,000 Instagram followers. During peak seasons, customers wait patiently among train noise for consultation with staff who treat plant care as both science and art.

The Gatanas family faces decisions determining whether their third-generation operation evolves or stagnates. Their location provides competitive advantages—transit proximity, free parking, minimal rent—but constrains expansion. Customer expectations rise while their traditional, relationship-based service approach shows strain.

Urban Garden Center embodies New York's entrepreneurial complexity: a business that succeeded by adapting to impossible circumstances while maintaining family traditions, now confronting whether those traditions can survive further evolution. The trains still rattle overhead, but whether this urban oasis can bloom beyond its roots remains an...

Summary: This place is a SCAM!!! Horrible customer service, they inflate prices online and plants arrive with price stickers with lower prices. They stole money from us and there is no follow up on returning it!!! Stay away!

Full Story: My husband ordered online from Urban Garden Center, we received the delivery and one plant was missing. Ok no problem we thought! We will just call and get the amount back, then we noticed price stickers on the pots of the plants that we did receive and prices were lower (- $5 each more/less) than what we have paid online. I emailed their info@ email with pictures and invoice copy and got no reply, I followed up still no reply, then I called and finally got someone on the phone. The women I spoke to told me that she will credit back the amount for missing plant and discrepancy in price back to original payment method. Great but no, I received the notification of the return and saw that the payment method that they credited money to is a completely different one, they credited VISA card and we payed with AMEX....I called again, explained the whole situation (and send them an email with prove that we paid with AMEX and they credited VISA card) that same women promised to call me back and sort it out and credit us the amount to the card that we paid with but I heard nothing back. I try calling again but no answer second day in a row.... I honestly can't believe it, its been more than a month and I feel like we will never get our money back... they owe us $45... I would not recommend, stay away...

Funny thing is that we wanted to support small local business by shopping with Urban Garden Center and not HomeDepot but at the end with the customer service that we got I...

Truly disappointed in the experience I had with UGC. I contacted Sarah, the manager at the time, from UGC about purchasing soil, pots, and plants wholesale for a nearby project I was leading in central Harlem planting a garden at a senior housing center. I wanted to purchase supplies from a local nursery to keep business within the community, which turned out to be a huge mistake while working with UGC. For one, they took their sweet time in responding back to my inquiries about working with them. Sarah was wishy washy about pricing and initially promised a decent discount considering how much soil, pots, and foliage I was buying from them (more $500 worth of supplies). She started at 40% off, only to drop down to 5% off the total which I only realized after I was sent the invoice. I was also told by Sarah that they would not charge me to drop off the supplies, as the senior home was 1.2 miles (to be exact) away from the UGC. Of course, I was charged the drop-off fee anyways. I literally purchased $500+ worth of supplies from them! Everything in the store was incredibly overpriced, to add to that. The cherry on top of the cake was the delivery driver, Angel, THROWING TRASH out of the UGC truck window when he pulled up to the senior home. Littered in front of the volunteer garden project for old folks. I will never understand that. I will also NEVER bring my business back here, and...