<b>Owner: </b>
Christy Beal
<b>Short bio: </b>
I grew up in Alexandria, an only child. My father was in the army, mom was a huge gardener. We always had a vegetable garden every summer. I studied fashion design and merchandising at Brooks College in Long Beach, Calif. and eventually drifted into the restaurant business, where I was trained for management and learned about transforming something as necessary and ordinary as food into a feast for the eyes. I moved back to Virginia in the early ’80s, then followed the sun to Florida for six years where, while still in the restaurant business, I became interested in gardening as a career. I moved back to Virginia in 1990 and quit a very lucrative job to work at a nursery making only $6 an hour. Later on, I got married, had a child and started working in landscaping fulltime at Bellehaven Country Club. After members of the club kept asking me to do to their yards what I was doing to the club grounds, I founded Garden Angel Designs — a full-service landscaping service which I operate today in addition to the shop. Acting on an insistent impulse to bring the beauty and color of the outdoors in, I opened Eclectic Nature in 2003. My beautiful, creative, whirling dervish of a daughter, Hannah, just turned 7. The painted rocks you see around the garden center are her personal creations.
<b>Why did you choose this particular business? </b>
As must be obvious to anyone who has been in my shop, I’ve always loved three things: gardening, decorating and color. Eclectic Nature is certainly a reflection of me and the dichotomy of my personality. The purses, jewelry, bath accessories, baby gifts, furniture, lamps and chandeliers inside represent the imaginative, extravagant, girly me. The flowers, plants, pottery, birdhouses and birdbaths outside speak for the part of me that loves nothing more than grabbing a spade and digging around in the dirt. It’s also important to me to support local artists and I carry a lot of original works, painting, stained glass and fine crafts. Although I’m not an artist in the conventional way, I love refinishing old furniture and salvaged items, transforming them with paint or fabric to bring new life to dull or empty spaces. In a way, the shop is my canvas, and the objects and style that I choose to share with my customers is my palette.
<b>Why did you choose to work for yourself rather than as an employee for someone else? </b>
Being in business for yourself isn’t easy, but there are, obviously, trade-offs. In exchange for my responsibility to employees, vendors, and creditors which sometimes seems unbearably awesome, I have the freedom to bring my own vision to life and the flexibility to set the standards by which I will do business. Nobody else gets to say "the quality of this product is good enough" when for me, it isn’t.
<b>What have you learned from being in business? </b>
Retail is an exercise in constant clairvoyance. Every time I bring something new into the shop, which is a daily occurrence, I am betting that someone will want to wear it, put it in their home or give it as the perfect gift. Fortunately, I am right a lot more than I am wrong. Since the shop is filled with things I love, I have to guard against taking it personally when it doesn’t work for my customers.
<b>Share an anecdote of a challenging or humorous experience or biggest surprise learned from working your business: </b>
On a hot day last summer, the water got turned off due to a water company snafu. To keep the plants from wilting we watered them with buckets taken from the water garden ponds and fountains. The natural fertilizer from the breakdown of plant materials is very good for the plants and it kept them from frying in our notorious summer heat. You have to take what comes, deal with it the best you can and go on to the next thing. Because there will always be a next thing.
<b>What have been the advantages and/or disadvantages of operating a business in Alexandria? </b>
The biggest advantage is that Alexandrians have great taste! Seriously, the community is very supportive of independent local businesses and customers are always telling me how much they love my shop. But I don’t think I realized how much a part of the community we are until the young man who is my nursery manager was diagnosed with cancer a few months ago. So many people brought gifts, offered to help run errands for him, etc. Some very special customers established a "Karing for Kurt" fund to help defray the cost of his treatment and recovery. It was like we were just another neighbor who needed help. It touched all of us deeply; it still does.
<b>Manager: </b>
Kurt Schmidt
<b>Key staff: </b>
Eileen Powell, Horticulturist and author of "The Gardener's A-Z Guide to Growing Flowers from Seed to Bloom" (Potting-Bench Reference Books)
Denise Dieter
Colleen Quinn
Louie Ratchford
<b>Description of services and/or products: </b>
Landscape consulting, design, installation and maintenance. We carry a huge assortment of garden accessories, shrubs, perennials, annuals, soils, mulches, beautiful pottery and almost everything the homeowner needs for the garden. Not to mention the items in our gift shop.
<b>Professional affiliations/associations: </b>
Northern Virginia Nurserymen's Association, Potomac West Business Association.