WAYLAND — It was moving day at Russell’s Garden Center.
Workers hauled pansies and lettuce, the first sprigs of spring vegetation, from enclosed greenhouses to an outdoor space with plastic sides that can be flung open to the warmth of the day and shuttered against the chill of spring nights.
“We needed 50 degrees,” said Elizabeth Russell, president of the shop. “I’d love to say it’s because of the first day of spring, but if it was 20, we wouldn’t be doing it.”
Inside, the shop offered the promise of the flowers, herbs, and plants to come. But the dirty snow piles and puddles in the parking lot were reminders that it takes time for winter to retreat.
Shoppers, arriving in the first minutes of the season, sought the wares of spring: seeds, pots, tools.
A rectangular room once stuffed with Christmas trees was stocked floor to ceiling with grass seed. Silk flower wreaths and Easter ornaments hung on display.
“It’s just very exciting for us because spring is the biggest part of the year for us,” Russell said. “It means pansies and plants and flowers and pussy willows and forsythias coming into bloom.”
Ed and Nancy Adams, a Marlborough couple married for 53 years, stocked up on seed for the birds that live around their home.
“I’ve still got 15 inches of snow in my yard, so right now, I can’t do a lot,” Ed Adams said.“The birds come back in force. We’ve got robins already in the yard.”