Sprout Home

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After working at Sprout Home’s original location in Chicago, Tassy Zimmerman launched the contemporary home-and-garden center’s second location in Williamsburg during the summer of 2007. Catering to the urban, artsy gardener, the roomy Brooklyn store has a cheery, lime-green wall and focuses on easy-to-maintain and unusual plants that can’t be found at a bodega or the Home Depot. An in-house designer creates customized arrangements and whimsical, inexpensive, pre-prepared bouquets with peonies, artichokes, protea, and other exotic cut flowers. Ivy-covered, high brick walls enclose the backyard, where Japanese maples and uncommon pines and junipers, as well as outdoor pots, teak window boxes, and hanging planters are delivered weekly. Items like organic soil, herbs, vegetables, and seeds; biodegradable containers by Ecosource; and natural pesticides cater to the environmentally conscious. And there’s a small assortment of home goods: local creations like Sesame Letterpress’s hand-stamped coasters and Skinnyskinny’s natural scented soaps, or imports such as Normann Copenhagen’s self-watering containers from Denmark. Shoppers can also get free on-site advice from the store’s garden designer and off-site consultations and installations for a fee. — Caroline Kinneberg