ABOVE: The home of the new Legacy Trees location, at the former site of Loxley Coffee at 428 Blue Earth Avenue in Fairmont. The store opens on May 3.

FAIRMONT– Legacy Trees and Gardens is gearing up to open a location in Fairmont. The family owned the operated small business first opened a store in Blue Earth in 2020.

Owner David Greer said, “It’s really a passion project for our family. It was born out of us not being able to find the plants we wanted locally. It was a way to bring different plants that local people want and can’t find.”

Greer said that he and his family spend a lot of time in Fairmont as they attend church there and he owns another building in town.

“We always thought a store would do much better here. A lot of clients come to Blue Earth from Fairmont,” he explained.

Because of that, he began looking around for a potential site in Fairmont and were driving by the former home of Loxley Coffee at 428 E. Blue Earth Ave. and thought it would be the perfect site for a store.

“We looked them up online and saw there was an active business there but I sent an email just to ask,” Greer recalled.

He said it ended up being good timing as Loxley Coffee was close to making the decision to focus more on its roasting business and less on the retail side.

“They want to continue wholesale so with the arrangement we worked out, we bought the property but are leasing part of the building so they can use the space to continue to make their coffee wholesale. It’s a win-win,” Greer said.

There is a large parking lot in the front of the building which will house structures to hold all of the trees up as Greer said they need to be ket upright in the wind.

The store will not offer annual plants but plants that will stay in the landscape year after year. This includes a variety of trees, shrubs and perennial flowers like hydrangeas and rose bushes.

“We have a lot of fruits and edible plants like blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and other fruits that we can grow in our zone and offer,” Greer said.

He said they will offer some indoor plants and some garden center items, like nice cement fountains, but will not carry things like dirt and mulch.

“People can get it cheaper somewhere else and that’s not our focus,” Greer said.

Their focus is plants.

He said some of the more popular ones people in this area of the state look for include Maple trees, Birch trees, rose bushes and fruit trees.

However Greer said they do special orders so if they don’t have a tree or plant in stock that someone wants they can work with their growers to get one.

It’s a seasonal business open May through September. Greer intends to start out being opened from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday.

The plan right now is to keep both the Blue Earth and Fairmont location open while they assess how business at the end store goes in the first season.

“We know that the revenue at the Blue Earth location will be lower as we won’t get people from Fairmont anymore but it’s a way to keep the business in Blue Earth because the community really appreciates it,” Greer said.

The store will be staffed by Greer, how wife, Brianna and their son. The family is looking forward to bringing their business to Fairmont and believes it will add something worthwhile to the community.

“We want to put things out that are going to last. We have high quality plant materials and we have a warranty on them to take care of our customers. The biggest joy is when I go past a tree in someone’s yard that they got from us– it gives me a thrill. We’re planting these things that will last for years to come, generations even, and we’re beautifying our communities,” Greer said.