A family-owned business that traces its Connecticut roots to the 19th Century and formed in its current iteration in the early-1950s has moved into the sprawling, pond-flanked commercial lot at the bottom of Frogtown Road—known for decades to New Canaanites under names such as Kimberly or Frogtown Farms & Nurseries.
Geiger’s Landscape has been serving New Canaan for more than six decades, in a variety of ways: residents have been customers of the business, dozens of New Canaan storefronts for years have had Geiger’s container gardens and plantings out front and, more recently, the company has helped beautify town pocket parks and the Talmadge Hill trail station.
John Geiger is the son of company founder Frank. He is senior landscape architect at Geiger's and he travels internationally as an expert consultant in his field, including as part of the company's beautification program.
Senior Landscape Architect John Geiger (son of company founder Frank) said New Canaan long has been a key town for the business.
“We’ve never had an office or garden center there in the past, but we’ve been working there and obviously it’s a wonderful community,” Geiger said on a recent afternoon during an interview at his Westport headquarters. “And when the Frogtown Nursery came up, we said, ‘What an opportunity to have an business in New Canaan.’ ”
This bend in the dip on Frogtown Road is familiar to New Canaanites. Long the home of Frogtown Farms & Nurseries, it's occupied now by Geiger's Landscape, a 61-year-old family business.
With a physical location in New Canaan and focus on landscape architecture, design, construction and property care, including organic options—in part because, though the Frogtown Road space is a retail nursery and garden center, that part of the industry has become increasingly challenging from a business perspective—Geiger said the company is eager to support the local community.
“Our strategic plan in New Canaan is really to help beautify public spaces, so that goes from Main Street to the football field (Geiger’s did work at Dunning ahead of last year’s Turkey Bowl) to the parks to the library,” he said.
In some ways, the company’s marketing strategy, forged through partnerships with businesses and municipalities in Fairifeld and Westchester Counties, is also its mission. Founded by the senior Geiger on principles of reinvesting in and supporting the towns it serves, the landscape business touts a “Making Your World More Beautiful” approach and has given to about 50 nonprofits, charities and community organizations in the region, including New Canaan High School, and after establishing the nursery and garden center at Frogtown, Geiger also planted a pin oak with the New Canaan Land Trust.
This container garden outside of Papyrus on Elm Street is Geiger's work. The company does this type of planting for businesses all over downtown New Canaan and in other Fairfield and Westchester towns.
When Geiger’s first approached the town to talk about bringing its beautification program to public properties here—about one year ago, First Selectman Rob Mallozzi said—the major priority from his office was to make sure other local vendors would be given the same opportunity (and that’s worked out, with New Canaan’s own Greg Sterba at his Weed & Duryea-based Gregg’s Garden Center and Landscaping taking on parts of the town).
“I think we would all agree that our town looks wonderful whether it’s by the work of the Garden Club or the Beautification League or Geiger’s or Gregg’s or any other group in town that’s able to beautify through the presentation of flowers and greenery,” Mallozzi said. “I think it’s a win-win. We don’t want it centered in one company, though it’s nice to know that Geiger’s is now here in New Canaan with a physical location for the first time over there on Frogtown. So they are becoming a big part of the community, which is nice.”
The container gardens outside of Mrs. Green's at the corner of Park and Pine Streets are Geiger's work.
Danielle Latorre, area manager for Papyrus on Elm Street, as well as on Greenwich Avenue, said the planters outside of the shop are from Geiger’s and the work is “very much appreciated because it makes our storefront look beautiful and also helps them out by displaying their brochures.”
The ability to display a small informational card in a beautifying arrangement—such as Elm Street’s Earth Garden does outside design solutions—recently was approved by Planning and Zoning, said Tucker Murphy, executive director of the New Canaan Chamber of Commerce.
Container gardens outside of Elm Street Books.
“P&Z didn’t used to allow for that, so it’s nice they recognized that there’s some value there,” Murphy said.
Asked for her thoughts on Geiger’s coming to New Canaan, Murphy said, “I look forward to more of what they’re doing and I don’t think we can ever have enough greening going on in town.”
From Geiger’s end, that beautifying will go on at the raised garden on the eastern side of Park Street just past Cherry, Waveny Pool and its concession area—something for all to enjoy—and in front of New Canaan Library, said Sonya Finch, the company’s marketing and public relations manager.
In terms of the diverse services that Geiger’s offers New Canaan (and all work is done by staff members at Geiger’s itself, not contracted workers), residents here, being inland and so not gravitating toward a “go to the beach” mentality, are more apt to want to be close to home, Finch said.
Geiger's Landscape at Frogtown Road.
“People in New Canaan, they work really hard, so when they come home they want to come home to a beautiful atmosphere,” she said. “They’ve been on the train in the city all day, they’re busy, so when we deal with our clients we like to get to know them, what their areas of interest, habits, likes, dislikes, because we truly feel if we get to know our clients’ personalities and what they like in life, then we can display that in making the world more beautiful in their element.”
One increasingly popular choice among New Canaanites who avail themselves of Geiger’s design teams (the company recently opened up a design studio in Greenwich in addition to expanding in Westport), are outdoor kitchens, complete with pergolas, stoves, outdoor refrigerators built into masonry rock and even marble countertops (“It’s literally like a kitchen has been brought outside from inside,” Finch said).
This is a raised garden along the esplanade-like sidewalk on Park between Cherry and Elm, and Geiger's is helping to manage it as a beautification spot in town.
Another area of interest is creating and maintaining lawns organically, Finch said.
“I hate to call it a ‘trend’ but I guess to some degree it is,” she said. “People have been doing it for years but it really has grown to a larger number to keep nature as clean and organic as possible.”
And that’s especially true for families with children, Geiger said.
“We as a company are pushing pushing pushing pushing pushing organic at our garden centers, and we have been selling organic products sine I was a kid, really for four or five decades,” Geiger said.
Geiger's Landscape on Frogtown Road.
Clients are given an option between pesticide-free landscape creation, care and maintenance and if that’s not what they want, Geiger’s pushes for “IPM” or “integrated pest management,” which minimizes the effects of chemicals both in terms of how much they’re used and in their strength, he said.
“Our mission and objective is to use as few artificial products as possible,” he told NewCanaanite.com. “Some say, ‘Yes I want 100 percent organic products and services.’ We push it and they say, ‘100 percent, I love the idea.’ We also manage expectations because a lawn is not natural. A bluegrass lawn like a golf course, that is unnatural, and if you don’t treat it you will have weeds, so we want people to understand that you cannot control weeds with organics alone, and some say absolutely fine that’s no problem, and we can have spots on our roses and crab apple trees, it will not kill the plant. If someone does say, ‘I don’t want crabgrass on the lawn, I am not 100 percent on board with this,’ then we do a hybrid approach and that is as much organic as we can possibly use and then we ‘spot-treat’ the area so the artificial products are used as minimally as possible. It’s like surgery for us.”
Geiger’s Landscape from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on May 10 will hold a Grand Opening event at its 259 Frogtown Road location, with pony rides, face painting, food, fishing and more.