Welcome

Can you believe that it's winter once again? It seems like we were just celebrating summer's late arrival and now we're knocking on the door to the holidays. Another year has passed and our gift shop has once again transformed into a winter wonderland of fantastic products for the season.

In the What's New section you can learn about Christmas trees and their eminent arrival. We also feature one of our recent projects on Mercer Island and give you the run-down on rain gardens.

The Holiday Shopping area contains three categories or price ranges: Under $10, Under $25, and Under $100. Be sure to check out each one. You might be surprised at what you find.

Finally in Good Stuff we offer a delectable holiday appetizer, a sweet treat, and a cocktail to go with it.

A message from Rick

Owner of Falling Water Designs and Falling Water Gardens

This will probably be our last newsletter until next spring so I wanted to take a moment to mention a few things.

First is a great big THANK YOU! To all our customers who support our business. Without your business we wouldn’t be here.

Winter Pond Prep

You may be getting tired of us reminding you but it’s time to get your pond ready for winter. This includes; cutting back the plant material, remove annuals like hyacinth and lettuce, stop feeding your fish, net your pond, and prepping your bead filter and UV sterilizer. For more information visit our blog article here.

Holiday Decorations and Gifts

Remember us during the holidays. We have unusual and super affordable gifts for gardeners and ponders. The gift shop is overflowing with cute holiday décor for your home, and hostess gifts for all those holiday parties and family get-togethers, and of course gift cards in any denomination.

Christmas Trees

Here are a few reasons to consider us for your Christmas tree this year:

• Our trees are fresher because we keep them standing in water from the day they arrive.
• Our trees are more affordable than in-city pricing-we check constantly and you’ll save big time!
• Our sales tax rate here is only 7.7%!
• This is the last money we make until spring. Wouldn’t you rather support your favorite nursery instead of some dude who sets up shop in a parking lot for four weeks?

Free Landscaping

The Seattle Public Utility is Paying 4000 eligible Ballard Citizens to landscape their gardens. This is a super exciting program that we discuss in detail in this newsletter, but basically if you live in the Ballard area you can get free landscaping that protects our natural resources and stops raw sewage from entering Puget Sound and Lake Washington and at the same time beautifies your garden.

If you live in Ballard or know someone who does check out the information in our newsletter or these websites: www.seattle.gov/util/rainwise or https://rainwise.seattle.gov

Falling Water Designs will do the work for you and you get paid for having it done. In most cases it pays 100% of the cost. And guess what? Next spring they are adding other neighborhoods.

The 3/50 Project

I’m saddened to report that Emery’s Nursery, a well known nursery in Lynnwood is closing its doors after 14 years in business. “But tough economic times have meant that more and more people are turning to big box stores for their gardening supplies. Gardeners shop at Costco, Lowe's or Fred Meyer for plants but then come to Emery's for advice on how to tend to the flowers, shrubs and vegetable starts they've bought elsewhere” Amy Tullis, Emery’s garden center manager said.

About a year ago a new restaurant opened up near me. It looked interesting and offered dinner theatre. I was always going to stop but I never did. About a month ago it went out of business.

I recently found out about an organization called the 3/50 Project (www.the350project.NET). The purpose of the organization is to remind people to purchase from small brick and mortar stores instead of large big-box retailers or online.

Think about 3 independently owned businesses you would miss if they disappeared. Stop in, purchase some small item. Those purchases help them stay around.

If only half of the currently employed population spent $50 of their normal monthly budget that they are going to spend anyway in a big-box store, at an independently owned brick and mortar store, $42 billion dollars would be diverted to smaller independent companies.

For every $100 spent at independently owned, local companies $68 comes back to the local community through taxes, payroll, and other expenditures. The profits earned by the owners are also typically spent locally. Big-box, national companies return between $14 and $43 to the community. Big-box companies often get huge tax breaks and their profits are distributed by way of dividends all over the country. Buy online and $0 is returned to the community unless the company is located locally.

I’m not suggesting that I’ll never shop at a big-box national retailer, but I am suggesting that I can take $50 that I am going to spend there anyway, and spend it at one of my three favorite independent, local companies. If more of us did that maybe Emery’s and that cute restaurant down the street would still be here.