Eagle Rock Disappoints Plant Nursery Owner

It's been about two months since Eagle Rock got a full-fledged plant nursery—its first in living memory—and its owner is more than a little disappointed by the business he’s been getting from Eagle Rockers.

"My prices are reasonable but Eagle Rock people are always asking for a bargain," says Hi Duk Lee, owner of Echo Garden, which relocated from Echo Park to 4515 York Blvd., a few blocks east of Eagle Rock Boulevard. Adds Lee, as if adding insult to injury: “Highland Park people are much better [customers].”

While positive news about the garden is spreading slowly by word of mouth, Lee says customers aren't exactly flowing in. Although he still gets many customers from Echo Park who used to patronize his old nursery, they hardly make up for the relative lack of business from local residents.

“We need customers from Glendale and Pasadena,” says Lee bluntly.

Running a nursery is tough work, and Lee does it almost single-handedly. Although his wife and daughter help out at the cash register and in the office, it’s Lee who does all the heavy lifting in the garden, which is located next to a proposed and highly contested 7-Eleven store on the intersection of York and Tonawanda Avenue.

“If I hire someone I have to pay $20 an hour,” he explains. “And he must know about plants.”

A Korean immigrant who came to the United States when he was 29 years old, Lee, 75, is a widely traveled man whose sense of world history and politics completely belies his blue-collar demeanor.

South Africa? Sure, he's been there—and he can argue authoritatively about how Mandela's revolution hasn't been good for the nation's economy. Japan? "Japanese are honest people, but the government is not," he says.

Lee does his best to keep customers happy. He serves them iced tea on hot days and is known to sometimes give complementary flower pots to customers he particularly likes.

Many of his regular customers are drawn to the wide and attractive selection of plants at Echo Garden. “I came to buy a flower pot but I found something else,” said Corrie Shenigo, a Mount Washington resident during a visit last week on Saturday.

Said Kristen Warren, a Highland Park resident: “I love it here.”