GARDENS

“There’s no way for a happy symbiosis with nature in a greenhouse,” says Kim Clark, now the third-generation family owner of Lambert Growers in West Valley City. She knows she has to protect her plants from pests like aphids, which have no natural predators in a closed greenhouse environment. So she introduces the predators herself. 

On a given day, Clark might spread 10,000 eggs of the green lacewing, also known as an aphid lion, throughout one of her greenhouse buildings. These hatch in 7-10 days and will be ready to eat the aphids as they arrive. Once they mature, adult lacewings will fly up to the hanging baskets and lay more eggs there. 

Kim also uses beneficial mites and parasitic wasps to do her dirty work. That’s bad for the aphids but weirdly, wonderfully good for people who want to eat naturally grown vegetables without pesticides. Lambert Growers has been a “no-spray” greenhouse since 2018. They get rid of aphids and other veggie-chomping pests with biological pest and disease control tools provided by Sound Horticulture, a Bellingham, Washington, business that helps horticulture businesses develop practices that are better for people and pollinators. 

“They’re doing a fantastic job of reducing their reliance on synthetic and dangerous pesticides,” says Alison Kutz, founder of Sound Horticulture. “It’s fantastic for the end customer because there’s no dangerous chemical residues on anything that’s walking out the door.” She points out that the beneficial soil-dwelling mites and nematodes used by Lambert Growers are super persistent, “so that means when a customer buys that hanging basket it’s already been inoculated … those will stay in the soil for the whole life of the plant.”

Kim and her husband, Charlie Clark, recently purchased Lambert Growers from Kim’s mom, Marianne Rowley, who had run the family business with her sister Joan Willden for 12 years.

Marianne and Joan bought Lambert Growers from their siblings, who had all grown up working in the greenhouse that their parents, Paul and Barbara Lambert, founded in the late 1950’s. Marianne remembers when customers shopped by choosing among a selection of display plants. 

"They’d tell us what they wanted, and we kids would run and get it and bring it up to the front,” she says. “Then we started putting tables in with rows of plants so people could shop for themselves.”

Paul Lambert was a builder and engineer, and he made everything the greenhouse needed, from a mechanized “flat filler” to the wooden flats themselves. Barbara managed the business side of things. Lambert Growers continues to sell some of their favorite varieties of plants, like the Jet Star Tomato, in their honor. 

Maintaining a handful of greenhouses year-round has always been a huge task, and Kim and Charlie got more and more involved as the years went on. “We started to have a really good sense of having to juggle behind the scenes, and try to sleep and eat if possible,” Kim says. She and Charlie worked steadily on the business until Aunt Joan wanted to retire and Marianne reached out and asked if they’d like to become the new owners. Marianne is staying on, but with the sense of freedom that she can retire when she wants to and will be leaving the business in good hands.

Lambert Growers has a strong gardener fan base because they encourage customers to know the ins and outs of biological pest and weed control so they can follow the same practices in their own gardens. 

“We open up the invitation, we invite them in the back, we show them what our processes are so they can feel good about it,” Charlie says. The greenhouse is run on the industry’s best-practices; it’s not necessary for all plants to be organic-certified to be the healthiest they can be. “Organic is more like a brand, and people are kind of catching on to that,” Charlie says. “We want them to know we’re doing everything in our power to give them the best product.” 

Weed control is also done as naturally as possible. “Within the buildings we do a lot of hand-pulling,” Charlie says. “Employees create a culture of, if you see a weed, you pick it and get it out of the building.” Even along their three uncultivated acres along Redwood Road, where super-resilient Utah weeds sprout unchecked, much of the weed mitigation can be done without spraying.

While Paul and Barbara Lambert’s generation was interested in flowers like Candy Apple Petunia and Treasure Chest Geranium, today’s customers are more interested in heirloom and open-pollinated varieties of vegetables. “People are getting into saving their own seed,” says Marianne. “You can’t save it from a hybrid plant.” To that end, Lambert Growers demonstrates how to save seeds from the most hearty plants so they’ll grow better the next year.

Marianne adds that there are a lot of new gardeners since Covid, and developing a robust garden takes knowledge and work. The Utah State University Extension Office garden program is one resource Lambert Growers offers customers. Members get a discount at the greenhouse and access to a variety of educational events, and staff frequently reach out to the extension office for information. 

There’s plenty of work to do this winter. Charlie has building maintenance on his list, while Kim and Marianne will do the paperwork and ordering. The whole crew will do a round of deep cleaning, as weeds and debris are breeding grounds for overwintering pests. Nearly 100% of the edible selection at Lambert Growers is grown in-house from seed, so they’ll start seeding in January to make sure plants are ready for customers in the spring. 

Although their vegetable selection is extensive, Kim says they’ve been pretty small potatoes in the greenhouse business, gaining all their traffic through word-of-mouth advertising from happy customers. “That’s very special to us and we recognize how unique that is,” she says. “My mom and Charlie and I have all worked so long to make this place work. It’s a very tender thing to get recognized by the community.”