Lynde Landscaping Makes it's Mark in Minnesota

One local family's business blooms despite the state's natural obstacles

By: Haily Gostas | From the issue: April 2010

While the core team behind Maple Grove’s Lynde Greenhouse & Nursery might not always have state temperatures on their side, these designers, growers and caretakers are certainly onto something West Coast-like in nature. Affable and educated, they spread their enthusiasm through gardens of all sizes, strongly encouraging the scenery as long as the warm-weather window of the Midwest stays propped open. To this staff, landscaping must not lie dormant—it must pop, providing a personal getaway from the ordinary (or at least the inevitable first frost).

Founded in 1896 by Charles Horace Lynde and his wife Margaret, the company was conceived as a small vegetable-growing business. Now, Lynde is in its fifth familial generation, with a greenhouse spread over four-plus acres and its business model completed by a neighboring garden center. These expansions, combined with the staff’s willingness to tackle any project no matter how ambitious have clearly been the secret to Lynde’s success. And though it has been over a century of cultivating, installing and preserving Maple Grove properties, both commercial and residential, they still show no signs of slowing down.

“I’ve always loved the idea of making the outside of your house just as part of your home as the inside,” says Lynde sales and marketing manager Mindy Krueger, who traded in an office cubicle for greenhouse work and is now in her tenth season. “Because of our climate, we have to take full advantage of the short seasons. It’s about working with what you have, not against it, to get what you want.”

This in-touch yet can-do attitude about Lynde has made them the natural choice to outfit The Shoppes and Fountains at Arbor Lakes Shoppes mall areas. A popular Minnesota destination, this outdoor collection of shopping and dining amenities understandably requires a property with beautiful, escapist qualities. And the hot tub-sized stone planters, plentiful hanging baskets and elegantly spaced flower beds look so natural; it’s easy to forget the year-round work required to keep things pretty, happy and healthy.

At the end of each August, Lynde landscape designer and farm-raised horticulture devotee Allison Slabbert blueprints Arbor Lakes’ look for the upcoming year. All 10,600 square feet for the ground beds, as well as the 232 for planters and the 132 for baskets, must be accounted for. “There’s a lot more detail to designing and planting, a lot more behind-the-scenes work, than people might think,” Slabbert explains. “But I love it because you get to be creative and be outside. And because plants are beautiful.”