GRANBY  –  A new business in town is offering residents an opportunity to expand their knowledge and collection of plants of all varieties.

Joshua Barr owns Little City Greens with his wife Tiffany and son Adrian. He said he initially began his work in the legal industry where he said he began to grow his personal collection of houseplants. “I was involved in the cannabis industry. While I was working for the legal industry I had a collection of houseplants at home,” he said.

Barr said as his collection of houseplants grew, so did his interest in more rare and exotic plants. “I was drawn to the more rare and sought after plants. They sucked me in, the market was growing for them so quick and fast,” he said.

He explained that as he grew his collection, he immersed himself in researching and networking within the plant community. “Before I knew it, I had familiar people that I’d crossed paths with,” he said.

Barr said this gave him an opportunity to own some rare plants that tend to be more expensive and difficult to acquire. “It gave me an opportunity to get my hands on some rare and exotic plants and learn about them, which can be extremely expensive,” he said.

This, he said, was what led him to open Little City Greens at 102 New Ludlow Rd. in Granby. The shop specializes in rare and exotic houseplants, but they also sell what Barr described as “the popular plants of 2020 and 2021” and common plants such as begonias. Barr said his goal is to make sought after plants more affordable and accessible to those looking to expand their plant collection.

“My whole goal is to get them at an affordable price or grow them at an affordable price and help people get their hands on them without spending thousands,” he said.

Part of this goal, Barr explained, was growing his own rare plants and propagating cuttings from such plants. “Our goal is to grow them out and propagate our own offer low price cuttings to grow their own. What we do with the cuttings, we grow them out, put them on the shelves as a full plant and offer them for hundreds less than online,” he said.

He said he tried not to buy plants from private sellers as they couldn’t provide the certification Barr required. The certification, he said, “guarantees they’re safe and won’t spread anything” such as soft bodied parasites or mites to other plants in his store. In addition to buying from certified sellers, he said, when he purchases plants he sprays them with an all natural pesticide and quarantines them from other plants to ensure nothing is being spread among or potentially killing any other plants.

“We do a secondary treatment, an all natural spray that’s safe for bees, insects, but kills soft bodied [organisms],” he said. “We would never want to spread anything to anyone else’s home.”

Barr said it’s not just experienced gardeners and plant owners that have been seeking out the store's services and his advice. “I get a very mixed bag. It seems to be avid collectors to see what we got, word of mouth gets people looking for those,” he said. “I get a good number of people who are new plant owners, new home owners looking for a little bit of green to liven up their home.”

Additionally, he said sometimes people are just seeking his advice on how to care for or maintain the plants they currently have. “Sometimes they have plants and come to me for some clarification on this,” he said.

Barr said while he was “still growing the collection” of plants he keeps in stock, he said he felt one of his personal favorite varieties of plants, alocasias, seem to be popular among customers. “I am a big collector of the alocasias, all varieties. They have a unique leaf structure, the deep dark greens,” he said.

However he added that customer favorites tend to vary. “I think it’s based on appearance and the limited availability,” he said.

Barr said he and his family had received a lot of support from the community, both residents and elected officials. “We’ve had so much support from the community of Granby, all our neighbors [and] the Selectboard. Whether it’s talking on the phone or helping us,” he said. Barr added that members of the community and Selectboard had even helped them set up a booth at a recent community tag sale to “show some of the products we have to offer.”

Moving forward, Barr said  he hopes they can utilize the large amount of store space they have to host workshops and other events to help educate people on plant care. “We have about 700 square-feet of store space, a lot of open, available space. Going forward we hope to host one or two classes a night [and] break them down by fertilizer or soil types,” he said. “Some people have been asking about cannabis and want to grow their own, but are not sure where to start. We have a few ideas for things we want to roll out, get people involved and get their hands dirty.”

Barr said one of the focuses of the shop moving forward was to make space for creators to sell their products. “One of our focuses going down the road and currently is reaching out to a lot of other small businesses, someone at home making macrame or pots out on the market,” he said. “We don’t need big box stores for these items.”

For those who might be afraid to begin growing their own houseplants, Barr said he recommends simply leaving plants alone. “This is something I personally live by, the more you love and care for your plant, the faster it dies. A lot of people overwater, they’re very eager to be involved,” he said. “Sometimes we can love the plant a little too much, let them dry out a little bit in between waterings. If I can do it, anybody can do this.”

Barr said he felt grateful for the opportunity he’d been given with Little City Greens. “This is an opportunity that I never thought would be available to me, but I learned a lot about myself and plants. If you're willing to put in the work you can do anything you want to do,” he said.

Those interested in more information on Little City Greens, including their hours and available products are encouraged to visit their website littlecitygreens.com or the Little City Greens Facebook page.