What started as a downtown Farmer’s Market booth featuring European-style window garden boxes and containers has matured into a thriving, richly-packed oasis that not only provides blooming and ornamental plants but classes, programs and workshops for amateur and experienced gardeners in the heart of the ever-busy Salt Lake City Library.

And, while a few shops – with owners anxiously anticipating financial windfall in being a part of one of the city’s busiest attractions – have come and gone since the library opened four and a half years ago, English Garden owners Ximena and Lyndon Tan have persevered, creating an enterprise that fits perfectly in “the living room of the community.”

“We truly feel that we are partners in the library,” Lyndon said. “Early on, our goal was to become a part of this community where not only patrons could bring a gift or bouquet home but they also could have an educational outlet for developing their appreciation of beautiful plants and flowers.”

Ximena expertly crafts floral designs that one definitely will not find among the sample arrangements in the catalogues of nationally networked florists. Bringing a sense of Old World style from Europe where homeowners routinely adorn their properties and streets with garden boxes, she ingeniously creates containers with flowers, herbs, and ornamental plants. The store also features unusual orchid varieties, tropical bonsais, and topiaries as well as gift items made by independent artisans in South America as well as a few local artists.

However, the English Garden is more than a floral gift store. Working with library staff, the family helps organize workshops and gardening classes throughout the year on topics ranging from caring for ornamental plants to growing herbs and to advising how to design a water-wise garden, perfect for the desert climate of a typical Salt Lake City summer. A class on English cottage gardens, for example, brought nearly 50 people. The Tans also donate floral designs for public library events as well as auction items for fund-raising benefits.

The seed for bringing English Garden into the library was planted at the Farmer’s Market during the summer of 2002, just months before the building was scheduled to open. “Ximena had a booth selling European garden boxes and containers which was doing very well,” Lyndon recalled. “In fact, we didn’t realize at first that the library wanted a florist but we thought it was a great way of bringing color into the large cement and glass space.”

Being selected to operate a library shop was not automatic. Vendors were required to develop comprehensive, rigorously detailed business plans that dovetailed with the library becoming what architect Moshe Safdie once approvingly called a “cultural warehouse.” Sensitive toward the responsibility of not intruding upon a difficult, challenging downtown retail business environment, library and city officials ensured that no existing downtown stores would relocate. And, like in any other location, business owners were fully responsible for rent and business expenses.

“In the beginning, we immediately recognized the challenge of making this unique partnership work,” Lyndon said. “We wanted to invite people to come and smell the flowers, much as they would at home in their living room.”

The fruits of that synergistic orientation are reflected in the customers. “So often, we have customers who say ‘I didn’t use to like plants’ or ‘I didn’t think I had a green thumb,’” Lyndon explained. “Even kids get books about flowers and stop in the shop to get an actual look at what they’ve seen in the photos. It certainly leaves a strong impression.”