South Shore Loam changing its name
In an attempt to broaden its audience to include more retail customers, a Rockland-based landscaping supply company is expanding to Weymouth and changing its name.
South Shore Loam & Mulch will open a retail showroom on Bridge Street on April 2, taking over the 3,200-square-foot space left vacant after Quincy Adams Garden Center closed its Weymouth location in December. To mark the occasion, the entire company will be rechristened South Shore Landscape Supply, reflecting the new shop’s focus on homeowners.
Jim Olson, the company’s general manager, said he expects about 70 percent of the Weymouth store’s sales to come from regular retail consumers. That’s a sharp departure from the model in Rockland, where contractors and distributors account for 70 percent of business, he said.
South Shore Landscape started as a natural offshoot of R.A.D. Sports, a Rockland company that builds natural- and artificial-turf sports fields – including the one at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro. The process of installing the turf creates excess topsoil and loam, Olson said. So in 2002, owners Rob and Derek Delmonico decided to sell those byproducts to contractors from their 11-acre lot on VFW Drive. The brothers later branched into organic mulch, and started making the landscaping products on site.
When I popped into Bernard Chapman in Bank Street, Braintree, Essex I spotted this beautiful red rose.
Keeping the St Valentine theme in mind, I walked past Fleurtations, and the red ribbons for today.
The Christmas presents are in the shops. The decorations and Christmas trees are up.
A visit to Braintree in April 2011.