If you want to see why Joe Grande’s a contented, cheerful guy, you’ll have to stop
by 5323 Wilson Mills Road, Highland Heights. Watch for the sign on the north side of the road that says Grande’s Nursery. It’s set on two acres, and operates out of a one-room schoolhouse that was moved to the location in the early 1900s, and includes an old wooden voting booth, too.
Be careful of the two cats in the parking lot.
Check out his customers, some of whom were likely customers when his father bought the nursery around 1974. They’re smiling, naturally. They’re buying flowers, vegetable starts and anything else they need to take advantage of the growing season.
“People come here in good moods,” Grande said. “A relative who sometimes helps
out says it’s where the happy people are.”
Grande, who took over the business almost 20 years ago, proudly caters to organic
backyard farmers like himself. Want to control aphids, mealy bugs and other garden predators without using chemicals? Buy some bags of ladybugs, praying mantis eggs that’ll hatch in your garden, or nematodes, microscopic organisms with a taste for garden pests.
It’s how he controls pests with the bad judgment to intrude on his own garden of
tomatoes, eggplants and peppers. Protecting produce without chemical contamination is very important to him, he said, for health reasons.