Quick Answer
Happy Mother's Day from Ottr Landscape Supply. To every Massachusetts mom who's spent a weekend on her hands and knees in the dirt — who taught a kid how to deadhead a marigold, who remembers the names of every shrub in the yard, who got up early to water the new tomatoes — today is for you. We're closed today. We hope you spend it in your garden, or someone else's, with the people you love.
To the Massachusetts Mom Who Gardens
This is a short post.
There's no product to sell today, no how-to to follow, no contractor playbook. Just a thank-you to the moms across MA who keep the gardens going. The ones in Plymouth and Brockton and Brookline and Newton and Cambridge and Quincy who carry a half-eaten croissant out to the back yard at 7 a.m. on a Sunday because the lettuce needs water and the peonies just opened.
You're the reason most of our customers got into this. You showed someone how to mulch a tree without smothering it. You explained, at some point, the difference between a perennial and an annual. You held the trowel and let a kid scoop the soil. You let them name a plant something ridiculous.
We see you. Thank you.
A Few Things to Spend Today On
If you're looking for what to do today with mom — or with yourself, if you're the gardening mom reading this — here are a few low-stakes options:
- Walk through her garden with her and ask what's blooming. Most moms can talk about their plants for an hour without realizing it. Just listen.
- Help her plant something. A single tomato seedling, a perennial, a pot of herbs. If she's already gotten a cedar bed gift (see yesterday's post), help her plant it.
- Take her to a public garden. Arnold Arboretum in Jamaica Plain is free. Native Plant Trust's Garden in the Woods in Framingham is a 45-minute drive from Boston and full of MA natives in full May bloom.
- Sit on the porch and let her tell you what's wrong with the bed she's not happy with. Take notes. You'll know what next weekend looks like.
For the container combo you can still assemble this afternoon if you haven't gotten her anything yet, see 5 Container-Garden Combos for a Brookline Front Porch in May. The geranium / dusty miller / bacopa combo runs $40 and takes 20 minutes.
A Note from the Ottr Team
Ottr Landscape Supply is a family business in eastern MA. We named it after the family dog (named, in turn, after the otter — the animal that's playful, persistent, and family-oriented). Most of our customers know our team by name. Most of us learned about plants from a mother, an aunt, a grandmother. That's not marketing — that's how this kind of business actually works.
We deliver mulch, loam, stone, and bedding materials across MA. We're closed today and tomorrow (giving the team Mother's Day weekend). Back to delivery Tuesday, May 12. Plan ahead.
For the tomorrow-after-Mother's-Day yard reset, see How to Reset After a Busy Mother's Day Weekend in a Suffolk County Yard.
The Garden as a Through-Line
A garden is one of the few things a person can leave behind that keeps growing without them. The perennials you plant this May are still going in 2046. The tree you planted last year is taller than you next year. The bed your kid helped fill on a Mother's Day morning is the bed your grandkid will help mulch in 15 years.
Most of our customers — the contractors, the homeowners, the moms — get this without us saying it. But on Mother's Day it's worth saying out loud: gardens are how memories outlive memory. And the mom who started yours is the reason you're reading this site at all.
Browse the native plant collection at Native Plant Trust, the MA Audubon native gardens program, or just walk outside.
Happy Mother's Day.
— The Ottr Landscape Supply team
For tomorrow's first-back-to-work piece, see How to Reset After a Busy Mother's Day Weekend in a Suffolk County Yard. For the full catalog, see collections.
