About
History of shop
What was previously an empty asphalt lot now sits our lush and buzzing garden shop. Located in the Alberta Arts neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, we offer a wide variety of plants and garden-related goods for the houseplant enthusiast to the landscape professional. By offering a unique selection of ecologically grown plants from unique growers region-wide, thicket has become a destination spot for our spirited gardening community. Along with our retail shop, we also host various workshops, offer design and coaching services, and returning in 2023- xmas trees! Our goal is to inspire, create, and educate our community while creating regenerative gardens for our local ecosystems. Let’s cultivate this growth together.
a letter from the owner
“My journey with gardening started far from the garden - it was my love and dedication to natural conservation burial practices that planted the seed. Volunteering as a steward for a conservation burial ground in Eastern Washington gave me the opportunity to connect with soil in a very intimate way through digging and prepping graves, essentially planting bodies. This service work was profound and soon guided me to Blue Raven Farm in Corbett, Oregon. This experience gave me a full season of learning from soil prep to fall harvest to a large native restoration project. While my love for growing food will always be a part of my gardening story, I was seduced into the wide world of plants by the insects that inhabit them and the desire to create habitats for these creatures. I was incredibly lucky to find a gardening mentor who took me under her wing. Working with a gardening elder, as I’ll call her, was essential for me as I learn best by ‘doing’. So much of gardening and working with plants is intuition, and there's no better way to learn than by just digging in. After working with my mentor in creating several gardens together, I began working at thicket and immediately fell in love with the shop. The energy, the beauty, and the interaction with other gardeners awakened a sense of belonging and purpose to my days. When the opportunity to purchase the shop arose, mid-pandemic, it was a scary thought. Becoming a business owner in the wildest time to be a business owner - yikes. But thicket was already a gorgeous living thing, and I had the love and desire to keep her thriving for the neighborhood and for all the critters that call her home.”
-Frances