Greensgrow Farms — Attraction in Philadelphia

This is an educational non-profit, so Im happy to support. They have a good selection of plants that sometimes look a little rough. Mostly old standards, with a few surprises. Some basic gardening supplies. Organic Mechanics cactus soil! That makes it worth the trip. They could do better with natives for sale. Was surprised to not see any native fruit trees growing or for sale. People are super friendly and cool.

Edit: last time I was there, the pricing was ridiculous. Some prices had been drastically increased and were more expensive than regular retail centers. This was troubling, since the mission is about sustainability and equitable access to urban gardening. The selection was bad. Plants in poor shape. There were too few staff, and they made everyone wait 15min to open. When I asked why everything was so expensive (several items were not priced, and when rung up, it was ridiculously expensive, so put most of it back), I got an earful about the poor decision of the board and ED, low pay, etc. The staff agreed on the pricing and said they told leadership not to raise it. They were obviously frustrated with the situation. Within a couple weeks, their troubles hit the news and they shut down. Sad.

Boards and EDs can be both helpful and harmful, especially when they forget their mission and do not provide effective leadership or oversight.

Google says they are only open on Saturdays for a few hours at one location. They need to update their website, which hasn't been updated since shutting down, and be transparent about what's happening, so those of us hoping you make it know what is going on AND DONT WASTE OUR TIME. Get in front of it! Your website has too little...

Friendly staff, nice quality products. I enjoyed my visit. The staff were friendly. The flowers and vegetable plants were very nice quality. It was nice to be able to see inside the grow houses for the vegetables. Also nice features to visit with the turtle water habitat /feature and the other animals (children and adults enjoyed). Large variety and quantity of herbs. It has nice quantity of some items (vegetables, herbs, certain flowers and plants etc), as the grounds are not as large, not as large of a variety of items, however what they do have is great quality and they carry in large quantity/variety of that item (e.g. purchased and have planted already some wonderful flowers not always found at other shops and they had large selection; they had large section of different types of mint). They have small farmers market area with nice quality of items (vegetables, refrigerated meats and cheeses, local honey, etc). We picked up black garlic, (not always available at farmers markets), which was so scrumptious on garlic bread, tricolor carrots, and couple other items. Pretty good prices on some things, some things little pricier, however this is the case anywhere you shop...just compare pricing. Free street parking out front. Have been a couple of times so far and will...

The employees (volunteers?) for most part are very knowledgeable which was a lovely surprise. I bought some apple mint and is very hardy and growing like crazy. I had came with the intention to buy catnip bit they didn't have any at the time. The employee knew to go right to the mint section 1st to look (not a lot of people know offhand that catnip is part of the mint family so score right there. Also, after she realized they didn't have it she instructed another employee to keep a list if the commonly requested plants they were lacking. I was impressed by this because I saw that as a sign that they really care about what the customers want. The plants looked healthy and there is also a pig to check out if you're so inclined. I had a really great experience here and it sparked my gardening bug for the year. Highly...