Why greenhouse grow at high altitude?
While this does present some rather large challenges, we’ve found that plants raised at altitude need little to no time to acclimate to the high winds, cooler nights and intense sun in the Colorado mountains. Growing starts in late February in heated greenhouses and Mountain Grown Gardens is closed to the public during the early months of production. Mountain Grown Gardens opens at Mother’s Day weekend each year with a great selection of hanging baskets as well as hardened off pansies, poppies and perennials.
Mountain Grown Garden started in 2005 as a commercial grower closed to walk-in traffic. Some of our first accounts were with the towns of Breckenridge and Dillon. Due to public demand, we opened to retail sales in year 3. We have expanded the size of the operation as the demand has grown offering more and more of our product to the general public. For 2022, we are growing 5000 baskets of various sizes, the majority of which are sold on a first come, first served basis.
Mountain Grown Gardens has become very well known all over the state for their big mixed hanging baskets. You can see these large baskets showcased throughout the towns of Breckenridge and Dillon and beyond. Our specialty is big, mixed variety and color flowering pots and baskets.
Hanging Baskets: Timing of Release, Supply vs Demand, Reservations:
We start planting baskets at the end of February. We continue planting many more baskets throughout March, April and into early May. Our first batch of baskets is available for sale at opening, Mother’s day weekend. We release additional batches of baskets at Memorial weekend, in early June with our last release at July 4 weekend.
Before the pandemic, we never had to worry about selling out of baskets between batch releases. Now, due to extremely high demand, we can no longer guarantee basket availability throughout the duration of the season.
The facility is only so big, finding employees is difficult. We were able to make an additional 500 baskets available to the public over the last 2 years but that hasn’t been enough to satisfy the demand. We cannot do any more than we are already doing.
Since 2019, our walk-in traffic has more than doubled. Where have all the people come from? Word of mouth has spread far and wide. Maybe they’re your friends. Maybe they’re your friend’s friends. We’re very grateful to have so many happy customers and we understand the frustration for the people who miss out.
Due to the large demand on hanging baskets, we have decided to no longer accept any new reservations. Reservations are very difficult to manage and we prefer to keep as many baskets available on a “first come, first served basis” as possible. Please note that we will be limiting basket sales to 10 per customer on smaller baskets and 4 per customer on large baskets.
