BRAWLEY – Early Mother’s Day shopping opportunities will be had in the parking lot of Brawley’s resident plant and flower nursery this Saturday.

Green Patch Nursery & Landscaping will be holding the Green Patch “Mother’s Day Market” for the second year in a row, Green Patch Nursery and half of the business owning duo, Barbara Esquivel, told IVP in an interview on Thursday, April 25.

The event will be a farmer’s market with a Mother’s Day theme, set against the backdrop of the Green Patch Nursery’s flora and fauna. About 16 local vendors will be on-site at the Green Patch parking lot on Saturday, April 27, from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., ready to sell their wares, some of which will include coffee, juice, cookies, candles and various other “arts and craftsy”-type handmade items, just in time for Mother’s Day gifts.

“This is my second one ever – we’ve been in business since 1983 – but it’s always been something that I wanted to do,” Esquivel, herself a mother of five children with her husband and business partner Richard Esquivel, said.

“A little market I think sounds cute in the atmosphere of plants, trees and flowers all around…someplace where you can just drink your coffee, walk around to the vendors and have a nice time,” she said.

The Green Patch business itself was started about 40 years ago, Esquivel said, when her husband Richard started developing and “growing” his passion for gardening and landscaping. At the time, Esquivel said she was left with a choice of what to do as her long distance operator job for the long-closed Pacific Bell/AT&T in El Centro was closing down.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think about a nursery, but (gardening) is my husband’s passion,” she said.

As the mother of five could have kept her job with a move to San Diego, Esquivel sacrificed her then-career so as to not uproot her family, choosing to stay in the Imperial Valley and support her husband’s passion as it began to blossom into what is now their joint nursery and landscaping business.

“Forty years ago we didn’t have money and he would cut grass, accumulate money, and go and buy a little tree or flowers and not take away from the household’s money – it would be his little passion just to beautify the yard,” she said.

“My husband just started cutting lawns and starting telling people his (gardening) visions, and before you know it he had a little business started and it turned into landscaping,” the wife, mother and business owner said. “It was a passion that turned into a business.”

These days as the landscaping side of Green Patch has been able to land large clients like Pioneers Memorial Hospital, Esquivel decided to continue the Mother’s Day Market to also help their fellow local businesses.

“The first (farmer’s market we put on) was very successful. It had tons of people show up and all of that came together, and the vendors did well,” the business owner said. “It also helps them out too, so they kept saying, “Let’s do another one please” so I said, ‘If we do it we have to do it before the heat comes.’”

“We’re doing it two weeks before Mother’s Day, (so) I just changed the name from a farmer’s market to a little ‘Mother’s Day Market,’” Esquivel said. “I’ve always wanted to do it because I love going to swap meets and farmer’s markets, and usually the ones that I’ve gone to are down Main Street.”

While Green Patch won’t have its own display out on the parking lot, the vendors will be selling their wares, drinks and snacks to make for a late-April preview for Mother’s Day, “and me and my husband will be there on the sidelines if someone has a question about plants or flowers,” Esquivel added.

““I just felt that even if it were a small market that it would be pretty with the ambiance of the plants and trees,” she said. “If you still need to buy a gift for your mother it’s a good place to come.”

The Green Patch Mother’s Day market will be held on Saturday, April 27, from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Green Patch Nursery, located at 254 S. 8th Street in Brawley.

For more information, call Green Patch Nursery during regular business hours at (760) 344-9975, by email at thegreenpatch@sbcglobal.net, or visit their social media pages by searching “Green Patch Nursery & Landscaping” on Facebook and Instagram.