On the QT | The Official Newsletter of GWA April-May 2016 | Page 20

MEMBER PROFILE

ELLEN ZACHOS

Business partnership rooted
in shared wall

A

lice Marcus Krieg (left)
and Carmen Devito
(right) are a horticultural
super couple. For years
they shared a wall at
the Horticultural Society of
New York. Carmen (with her
background in marketing)
worked on one side, running
the shop while Alice (with her
background in art and design)
worked on the other. She ran
the Green Branches program,
which designed and installed gardens at the
Carnegie Library branches in New York City.
They’d collaborate on special exhibits, melding horticultural education and commerce;
each brought her own expertise to the plant
party.
After 9/11, when money for public horticulture had gone the way of the carrier
pigeon, they decided to strike out on their
own. They started out with one client, who
commissioned them to design and install
a boxwood hedge. Alice and Carmen took
the fee from that client and incorporated:
Groundworks, Inc. (groundworksgardens.
com), was born.
In the beginning, Alice and Carmen (can’t
we just call them Carmalice?) did everything themselves. But the quality of their
work and the connections they’d made at
the horticultural society meant they didn’t
stay small for long. In less than two years,
they were designing the garden for the
Ohel David & Schlomo Synagogue in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn. Today their clients
include residential rooftop and backyard
gardens, commercial clients as well as
suburban and estate gardens. Needless to
say, they no longer do everything themselves. Groundworks now runs a crew of
five gardeners, and also employs seasonal
workers and subcontractors.

COMPLEMENTARY TALENTS
This is an enduring and balanced partnership. Carmen extols Alice’s talents as
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a salesperson and someone who connects with the
customers, inspiring warmth,
trust and long-term relationships. Alice praises Carmen’s
ability to innovate, get things
done and solve problems —
even those that initially seem
insurmountable. Both women
are creative designers and
dedicated plant people.
But that’s not all. Alice and
Carmen have broad and eclectic experience in the world of horticulture. They’ve
run their own retail establishment, sold
plants at the Brooklyn Flea and created
Brooklyn Blend, a trademarked potting
mix that has sold as far away as Dubai. In
2009, they began their radio show We Dig
Plants, on Heritage Radio Network (http://
bit.ly/22L0Nrv). We Dig Plants won three
Silver Awards from GWA in 2014: Overall
Radio Program, Radio Program Talent and
Podcast Series Talent. They won another
in 2015 for Podcast Series Talent.

GRAPE VINES SPROUT RADIO
Heritage Radio Network is based out of
two shipping containers in the backyard
of Roberta’s Pizza in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
Alice was having dinner at Roberta’s one
night when it dawned on her that this radio station, which is all about food, did not
include gardening content. This seemed
horribly unjust, and these two entrepreneurs pitched their idea for We Dig Plants
to HRN with a unique twist. At the time,
they were selling cuttings of Carmen’s
family’s Italian grape vines at the Brooklyn
Flea, s