Nest — Summer 2025

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Inside a Burlington designer’s home and B&B

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24 Summertime, and the livin’ is easy … or maybe not, but Vermonters embrace the short, intensely green season no matter what, right? To that point, this issue of Nest — Seven Days’ quarterly magazine on homes, design and real estate — profiles Julie Rubaud and her rapidly growing nursery, RED WAGON PLANTS, in Hinesburg.

We also pay a visit to the furniture makers and potters at SHACKLETONTHOMAS; the 37-year-old Bridgewater company has survived fire and flooding to thrive anew.

Readers will likely find interior inspiration from A DESIGNER-CURATED HOME AND B&B in Burlington’s Old North End. In the same neighborhood, we check in with LANDLORD STU MCGOWAN. After decades of rehabbing and renting — affordably — numerous vividly painted buildings, he’s ready to, well, let go and live easier.

Homey Hospitality .................. 8

In Burlington, Linda Provost has curated unique quarters for herself and guests B Y PA M EL A P O L S TO N

Sticks and Stones ...................14

Tradition lives on at ShackletonThomas, where craftspeople make furniture and pottery piece by piece B Y M A RY AN N L IC K T E IG

Moving On ...................... 20 The Old North End’s most distinctive landlord, Stu McGowan, is getting out of real estate

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20 ON THE COVER Linda Provost’s home and guest house seen from her backyard in Burlington’s Old North End

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PHOTOS: LUKE AWTRY

Homey Hospitality In Burlington, Linda Provost has curated unique quarters for herself and guests B Y PA M EL A POL STON • ppolston@sevendaysvt.com

When the house at 209 North Winooski Avenue was built, in 1867, Burlington boasted a population of about 14,000 and had not yet acquired its sobriquet of Vermont’s “Queen City.” The area now called the Old North End was a hub for immigrants — and still is. But since Linda Provost bought property there in 2003, an infusion of food purveyors has made her street a dining destination, as well. Think Barrio Bakery, Taco Gordo and May Day, among others.

Provost’s home has also evolved. In addition to removing an interior wall and expanding her first-floor living quarters, she created a distinctive bed-andbreakfast on the second floor and named it Little Place Guest House. The two smartly designed upstairs units — each with a bedroom, bath, small kitchen and seating area — are separated by an open-air deck.

Though travelers find Little Place through its website, Airbnb or just googling, passing motorists on the one-way street might not even notice the house. Painted shadow gray, it’s partially hidden by robust shrubbery and a red maple tree. But if you’re looking for it, the bright-green front door lets you know you’ve arrived.

The building’s exterior previews the palette inside. The guest rooms center neutrals — black, white, gray — accented by lime, turquoise and yellow.

Burlington-born Provost, 75, is a graphic designer and consultant with a discerning eye for color, not to mention pattern, texture and what goes with what. Her aesthetic encompasses contemporary and vintage, bought and found, urbane and offbeat.

“I made an attempt to stick with metal, glass and wood — natural materials,” Provost said of the B&B. “I wanted it to be clean, simple and uncluttered. I subscribe to several magazines for inspiration, but a lot of things just happened.”

In the street-facing bedroom, a spring-green coverlet is folded neatly over white linens; an antique bureau is painted butter yellow. The bed’s

Linda Provost’s home and guest house seen from her backyard in Burlington’s Old North End

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HO ME T O UR

The second unit at Little Place Guest House

The bedroom in the second unit

The seating area in Linda Provost’s home

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HO ME T O UR

Homey Hospitality « P.8

The bedroom in the first unit

headboard, which Provost said she found at IKEA, attaches to the wall to save space. The screenlike structure of narrow wood strips supports small shelves, a phone charger and tiny reading lamps. A worn wooden chest at the foot of the bed sits on a wheat-colored jute rug.

In the unit’s kitchen, green place mats on the vintage drop-leaf table echo a wall the color of pea soup. On a modern gray couch in the adjacent sitting space, more green appears in the form of a fluffy pillow. On a white fabric pillow — an Etsy commission — the B&B’s Wi-Fi password is printed in black Typewriter font. “So guests don’t have to remember it,” Provost noted.

PROVOST’S AESTHETIC ENCOMPASSES CONTEMPORARY AND VINTAGE, BOUGHT AND FOUND, URBANE AND OFFBEAT. Two of those guests, married couple Vince Manti and Nancy Nichelson of Albany, N.Y., have been coming to Burlington a couple of times a year for a decade. “We like the lake, the town, the restaurants, the farmers market,” Nichelson said by phone. At Provost’s B&B, she said, they enjoy the convenience of walking to the bakery, restaurants and Jake’s ONE Market. They also appreciate the off-street parking and the provided EV charging station.

“We are comfortable,” Manti added.

“It’s not a hotel. No TVs — you don’t need a TV. It’s restful.”

Manti and Nichelson were so enamored of Provost’s color and design sensibility that they sought her advice on their own home.

“Linda just helped us refurbish our living room and dining room from a distance, online,” Manti said. “Mostly new paint and furniture. She helped us pick a color for the kitchen. It’s terrific!”

When Provost bought her house, the upstairs was a separate apartment; she transformed that into her first guest room in 2011. Three years later she designed the second one, accessible by a staircase on the south side of the house.

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The kitchen and living areas in the first unit

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“In the future it could be a master bedroom or a mother-in-law apartment,” she suggested. However, she acknowledged that the stairs to both units are obstacles for visitors with limited mobility.

Provost’s private living space is a curatorial coup reflecting her personal taste, eclectic art and object collections, as well as her green thumb with houseplants. The overall vibe is serene and harmonious. Earthy, muted hues — gold, mustard, brown — gently complement the pale wall tint that Benjamin Moore calls Healing Aloe. Provost also painted two small walls, which frame the passage to a hallway and bathroom, in charcoal and rich lapis.

Much of the furniture is antique — including a trestle-style coffee table made by Provost’s grandfather, a pair of “shabby-chic” rattan chairs with white slipcovered cushions and a handsome Empire-style chest of drawers handed down from her grandparents. Yet, with contemporary lamps and artwork, the décor spans centuries.

Knocking out that interior wall for an expansion at the back resulted in a long, open space for the living room and kitchen. Warm-toned wood flooring seamlessly unites the two areas. Provost noted that radiant heating in the kitchen literally warms the wormy-chestnut boards she sourced at Planet Hardwood in St. George. Wood countertops — another IKEA purchase — flank a deep stainless steel sink with a slate surround.

Provost’s plates and cups are neatly displayed in a former hotel dish rack she found at an antique shop.

Old and new meet in the middle, too — at the kitchen island. Provost said Metalworks in Burlington fabricated its raw-steel top; all the cabinetry is from IKEA. A trio of metal cantilevered bar chairs are from Restoration Hardware.

Between the island and the dining table, a chipped square of thick sidewalk glass sits on twisted-metal legs.

The low platform holds a cascading Christmas cactus, several pieces of pottery and … a female torso mannequin.

In its previous life, Provost said, it was used to model girdles at Abernethy’s Department Store, which closed on Church Street in 1982. Bonus: The now-nude torso lights up.

Locally made sliding “barn” doors on an adjacent wall obscure a built-in pantry, while glass doors at the back offer a view of Provost’s lovely, and equally well curated, backyard. Just outside, an old conveyor belt has been reincarnated as a trellis.

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Linda Provost at her home and guest house

PAMELA POLSTON

Homey Hospitality « P.10

LUKE AWTRY

HO ME T O UR

PROVOST’S PRIVATE LIVING SPACE IS A CURATORIAL COUP REFLECTING HER PERSONAL TASTE, ECLECTIC ART AND OBJECT COLLECTIONS. It’s not hyperbole to call the house at 209 North Winooski Avenue a sanctuary.

That’s apropos for a B&B, but it also suits the owner, who said she’s been “sensitive to interiors” since childhood. Provost recalled that, growing up as one of four children, “I think I was the only kid who made my parents redo my bedroom.”

It was out with lavender and floral, in with white walls and an Indian print bedspread.

Little Place might be fully designed, but Provost happily embraces projects for others — local architects, private homeowners and friends alike.

Sometimes, she wakes up thinking about color. ➆ Mannequin and pottery on a glass table in the kitchen

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Sticks and Stones PHOTOS COURTESY OF SHACKLETONTHOMAS/MAX GRUDZINSKI

The ShackletonThomas showroom in Bridgewater

BY MA RY A N N L I C K T EI G • maryann@sevendaysvt.com

“Bear in mind,” reads a sign at the entrance to the ShackletonThomas showroom, “every object in this room made by us started out as a lump of clay or a piece of wood.” That’s all it says, yet there is so much more to the story.

Furniture maker Connor Rockwell

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Tradition lives on at ShackletonThomas, where craftspeople make furniture and pottery piece by piece

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The 38-year-old Bridgewater company that makes handmade pottery and furniture is named for Charlie Shackleton and Miranda Thomas, the married team who operate it. The two designer-artisans — and the six furniture makers and five potters they employ — are preserving traditional techniques.

In an era of mass-produced home furnishings, craftspeople at ShackletonThomas make art that’s designed to be used and built to last.

They work the old-fashioned way, Shackleton said, “because we believe in human hands creating things. And we believe that people nowadays are looking for things that feel like a human being has made it.” Handmade objects, he said, “represent the human soul in a way, but they also represent our lifestyle in Vermont. They represent the team of people that is working in this building.”

The furniture shop, showroom and company offices are housed in the former Bridgewater Woolen Company, in a section of the mill built in 1920. Visitors to the first-floor showroom can walk upstairs to watch furniture makers at work. Each has their own bench.

Workshop manager Shea Rodgers assigns a piece of furniture to one of his colleagues and that maker builds it, start to finish. Most pieces are made from cherry or American black walnut. On a Tuesday in June, Troy Woods, a former electrician and sculptor, clamped the trim onto the front of a sofa-table drawer. For generations, the slim table’s elegant lines and delicate dovetails will offer silent testimony to the skill of the hands that made it.

Nearby, Connor Rockwell shored up the mortiseand-tenon joints in a set of cottage chairs the company built in 1994. They’d gotten a bit wobbly after 30 years.

ShackletonThomas did not charge for the work; it guarantees structures for life.

BU SIN ESS At another bench, thinner-thanpaper wood shavings fell to the floor as Knox, a former stringed-instrument builder who uses only his last name, hand-planed the leg of a trestle table to satiny smoothness. Every piece of every table, chair, bed, lamp and cabinet is hand-planed. Some people come into the showroom just to touch the furniture.

Inside the pottery studio next door, Thomas and her team apply the same exacting standards as they make mugs, bowls, vases and platters that stem from English slipware tradition.

Potters learn each step of the process.

On that Tuesday, Meg Gray threw pots on a wheel while Jess King carved out graceful rabbits on a mug with a slender bamboo tool. Thomas deftly brushed thin, wavy blue lines around the rim of a

to be consistent, but we also don’t want to be consistent. We want to be special.”

The dominance of factory-made wares has trained consumers to think a mug should cost $12. Human hands don’t even touch those when they’re being made, Thomas said. “You’re just literally taking a liquid clay and pouring it into a mold.” The white slipware mug King was decorating sells for $95. A large vase costs $280 and a salad serving bowl, $600.

ShackletonThomas’ furniture prices, too, reflect the skills and hours invested.

Most pieces involve custom work. Beds range from $7,000 to more than $27,000.

Dining room tables start at $2,000.

Thomas’ pottery has been given as official gifts by presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and the United

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large platter, then quickly turned them into lush vines.

Equal parts art, geology and chemistry, the work requires understanding the interaction of the clays, slips, glazes and kilns. “We’re really cooking with rocks,” Thomas said.

Thomas designs every piece of Miranda Thomas Pottery, but she celebrates the subtle differences that occur when various potters make it.

Each puts their own signature mark on the bottom. “It’s funny,” Gray said. “You can go into the store and, without even picking up a pot, be like, ‘Evan made that. Jess made that. Christi made that one.’”

“And that’s the beauty,” Thomas said.

“That’s the incredible message we’re trying to get out there. We’re all trying

Nations. Recipients include former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, two U.N. secretaries general and two popes.

Twin Farms, a luxury Barnard resort where a one-night stay averages $3,600, gives a small piece of the company’s pottery as a gift to its guests and features ShackletonThomas furniture and pottery throughout its property.

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma has a 10-foot custom-made dining room table, but Shackleton claims not to know if other celebrities own his furniture. He doesn’t pay attention to them, he said.

According to company lore, a staff member picked up the phone one day, STICKS AND STONES

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Sticks and Stones « P.15

Examples of Miranda Thomas Pottery

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then excitedly ran to tell Shackleton that Glenn Close was calling.

“Who’s he?” Shackleton replied. He offered the same response upon learning that Tony Bennett was inquiring about a dining room table.

The fact that ShackletonThomas makes world-class furniture and pottery in a tiny Vermont town defies the odds. Shackleton, a cousin of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, and Thomas, both 66, have international roots. He was born and raised near Dublin, went to boarding school north of London and spent a couple of summers working in Denmark. She was born to British parents just outside New York City and grew up in Italy, Australia and New York. The couple met in art school in England, though they didn’t date there.

They reconnected a few years later in Vermont.

Pottery was an unusual career choice for a woman in Thomas’ world, and Shackleton had been outright discouraged from pursuing any handcraft.

“Everyone — including my father — said, ‘That’s a hobby,’” he said. Even at West Surrey College of Art and Design, Shackleton was told, “You will never make any money making things by hand.”

ShackletonThomas owes its start to another artisan who built an eponymous brand: Simon Pearce. Pearce was a well-known glassblower in Ireland about to move his business to Vermont when Shackleton’s brother Arthur designed a garden for him. Charlie was studying glass, wood and metal arts at the time. “I wanted to work in wood when I went to art school,” he said, “but I thought that glassblowing was a tricky skill — and if I learned it, I’d have a job for the rest of my life.”

He asked Arthur to help him get a job with Pearce. The glassblower invited the

Potter Meg Gray

brothers to dinner, and Pearce offered Charlie a job that night.

“I could see his enthusiasm,” Pearce said by phone. “And I really liked his brother Arthur; we were very good friends. And so I thought it was a risk well worth taking. And it proved to be exactly that.”

Shackleton quit school and moved to Quechee in 1981, where he learned to

blow glass. “He learned quickly,” Pearce recalled. More importantly, Pearce showed Shackleton that it was possible to run a successful business making tasteful, handmade products and selling them to an audience that understood their value.

Thomas came to visit Shackleton, who knew that Pearce wanted to expand into pottery. “I’ve found you a potter,”

Shackleton told his boss. Thomas, who had studied with British master potters Michael Cardew and Alan Caiger-Smith, started the pottery studio at Simon Pearce in 1984.

She and Shackleton married two years later, and Shackleton pursued his “hobby,” making furniture, in Pearce’s workshop at night. After six years as a glassblower, he left the company to build furniture full time in the basement of his ranch house up the road. When Pearce visited, he saw a bed that Shackleton was making and told him, “Make two of them. I’ll sell one.”

For the next 15 years, Simon Pearce sold Charles Shackleton Furniture, giving the woodworker invaluable exposure.

“I was growing like crazy because of Simon. He had 12 stores, and our sales just went up and up and up,” Shackleton said. His business grew from a single furniture maker in the basement to 27 working in the old woolen mill, selling $2 million worth of furniture annually to Simon Pearce alone.

“The quality of his furniture was outstanding,” Pearce said. “When Charlie does something, he does it properly.”

“I sleep in one of his beds,” he added.

In the late ’90s, Pearce proposed that he and Shackleton become partners in the furniture business, but Shackleton declined. “My father was a sort of terrifying mentor,” Shackleton explained, “and throughout my life, I have pasted that terrifying mentor role onto various people, one of whom was Simon Pearce.”

The fear was irrational, Shackleton admitted; Pearce had done nothing to cause it.

STICKS AND STONES

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Sticks and Stones « P.16 A couple of years after Shackleton rejected the offer, Pearce stopped selling Shackleton’s furniture. At the time, Shackleton recalled, Pearce told him, “I think you’d be much happier selling your own furniture.”

“I was flabbergasted, because that was 80 percent of our business,” Shackleton said. Fortunately, his name had appeared on every piece.

Thomas was already making pottery on her own.

She and Shackleton printed a catalog and created a website. They opened stores in Woodstock; Stowe; Hanover, N.H.; and Brooklyn, but they found that running them was exhausting. Their factory showroom had higher sales, Shackleton said.

“We decided we wanted to be home in the garden on the weekend, and we wanted to just foster this place and make it a great place to visit,” he said. They closed their last store, in Brooklyn, five years ago.

The COVID-19 pandemic and damage from two floods and a fire have posed additional setbacks.

The fire started on the third floor of the old mill last summer. Though it was quickly contained, the building sustained significant water damage, causing the showroom ceiling to collapse. Repairs are now completed, and no signs of damage are apparent to visitors.

The company workforce has shrunk, from 50 in its heyday of selling to Simon Pearce to 20, which Shackleton considers a comfortable level. Pottery and furniture sales have rebounded to $1.3 million a year. Shackleton and Thomas soldier on.

Sophie Shackleton often had a seat at her family’s kitchen table when her parents discussed business, art and their philosophy of why craft matters.

“I’m a firsthand witness to the ways in which they have committed their whole life to this — no matter what,” she said in a phone interview. “They’ve accepted scary financial times. They have had floods and fires, and they always rise to the occasion because there’s just no question that this is what they want to do. Deep in their souls, they know that it’s important and it matters.”

Sophie, 37, said she feels like the “black sheep who

Charlie Shackleton

Miranda Thomas

didn’t inherit the obsessively-making-things gene.” She worked on the business side of her parents’ company for about 18 months and now is Yo-Yo Ma’s creative producer. Her brother, Hugh, 35, was the furniture shop manager and now works as an artist, designing and making custom furniture.

Her parents provided a magical childhood, Sophie said. “They were always making things with their hands.” Her father baked. Her mother dreamed up elaborate birthday parties. “I believed in Santa Claus ’til I was 14 years old because she was so ornate about the way she created a whole world around it,” Sophie said.

Though she doesn’t share her parents’ passion — they taught her to follow her own — she understands it.

“I think that they believe and have personally experienced the ways in which human hands manipulating

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materials results in something that has more soul than something that is mechanically produced,” Sophie said, “and it’s some sort of communication from one human being to another that lends some kind of aesthetic magic to people’s lives.”

As work wound down on that Tuesday, Thomas and potter Gray tried to describe what happens when one person uses an object handmade by another. The object carries the essence of the person who made it and facilitates an “interlinking of humanity,” Gray said.

“It’s like an exchange in a way. It’s almost like a currency,” Thomas added. “And it’s a language; you can read it. We can go and look at pots in a museum, and you can see exactly where those potters’ hands touched it, where they pulled it a little bit hard.”

“There’s nothing in the English language that describes it,” she continued. “You can try ‘unique’ and ‘handcrafted.’ They’re really boring words to describe what we’re doing.” ➆

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Moving On The Old North End’s most distinctive landlord, Stu McGowan, is getting out of real estate B Y ANNE GAL L OWAY

An on-the-market Burlington property owned by Stu McGowan

BEAR CIERI

Stu McGowan and his wife, Joan Watson, at home in Burlington

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JOHN JAMES

The neon-colored houses that have brightened the neighborhoods of Burlington’s Old North End may take on more muted shades over the next few years, as longtime landlord Stu McGowan puts his buildings on the market.

REAL ESTAT E

Over 25 years, McGowan has rehabbed and maintained some of the neighborhood’s oldest housing stock for renters looking for decent — and reasonably priced — apartments. And you can’t miss the places he owns. The color schemes, each with three different garish hues, have long been McGowan’s calling card.

But as he puts 15 buildings on the market, it’s not just the chartreuse, violet and fuchsia that may go away. The low rents may disappear, too.

McGowan has sold five buildings over the past several years, and now he’s ready to sell off most of the remaining apartments, except for six near his home on Intervale Avenue.

“So, this has been a thing that I’m sort of dipping my toe into, but yeah, I’m not dipping my toe anymore,” McGowan said. “They’re all up for sale, and they’re all great buildings. Bones are solid.”

One of those properties, a commercial building on North Winooski Avenue that’s home to Barrio Bakery, is on the market for $1.12 million. Two apartment houses, on Park Street and Washington Street, are listed by KW Vermont at $560,000 and $364,000, respectively. All three buildings have been listed for 115 days; in April, McGowan dropped the prices on each by $15,000.

McGowan, 62, said he and his wife, Joan Watson, 75, are ready to “take it easier,” after 20-plus years of living at the 24-7 beck and call of tenants. They have no regrets. “I loved it,” McGowan said, but they’re ready to spend more time with their grandkids.

“So, you know, part of this is also that we’re 13 years apart,” he said of Watson, “and she’s at the age where she should just be able to do whatever she wants, to not worry about much of anything.”

Known for his New Jersey swagger, McGowan has never been subtle about his love for Watson, his former pottery teacher at the University of Vermont.

Every Valentine’s Day, he finds a way to declare his devotion. This year, he

emblazoned “Stu ♥ Joan” in hot-pink graffiti on the side of their brick house.

(He thought he’d be able to power-wash it off, but it turns out chalk paint is not actually made with chalk).

The two couldn’t be more different: McGowan is an extrovert with a penchant for friendship on the fly and a tolerance for risk; introverted Watson provides a steadying ballast. But together they’ve led principled lives, dedicated to a philosophy summed up by their daughter, Emma, as, “If you have a lot, give more.”

McGowan started his real estate venture in 1999 with one rehabbed building and grew his inventory over the years. Eventually, he would renovate 52 buildings in Burlington’s poorest neighborhoods.

McGowan’s nowdefunct ShoeLess Konstruction company, which trained young people in the trades, not only painted the exteriors in gaudy tones but also replaced plumbing, electrical and heating systems in dozens of buildings.

Money was tight.

Initially, the projects were financed through a sustainablecommunities fund at Chittenden Bank.

The banker, Kristie Wildes-LaFountain, believed in McGowan and convinced the bank to believe in him, too. “He wouldn’t be where he is today without her,” said longtime friend Erik Hoekstra, a managing partner at Redstone in Burlington.

Hoekstra, who also didn’t start his career with inherited wealth, worked with McGowan on a large project and bonded over “being scrappy and working hard,” he said. “We couldn’t afford to make a mistake.”

Rather than hiring a general contractor, McGowan managed the construction himself. “What made his formula work was he was hands-on, swinging a hammer with a crew he knew well,” Hoekstra said.

At times, that wasn’t enough to keep the projects out of hock. ShoeLess Konstruction nearly went bankrupt

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several times. McGowan leveraged one building to buy and rehab the next. The financial risk was nerve-racking, and Watson wanted no part of that.

“I asked [Joan] for advice on house number 3, and she said, ‘You can’t talk to me about financing. I’m going to go crazy,’” McGowan recalled. The couple agreed she would only weigh in on the paint colors.

It would have been easier if McGowan hadn’t decided to keep the rents as low as possible — and never raise them.

Though the business had to sustain itself, he had no interest in gouging neighbors in the Old North End, he said. Each year, he could have collected “about $100,000” more than he did from his tenants.

“Stu’s approach is community driven,” Hoekstra said. “He really cares about his tenants. If you were his tenant, you didn’t see your rents go up. If you stuck with him, he stuck with you.”

McGowan stuck with the Old North End in other ways, too. He has been a Little League coach for 30 years, and in the early 1990s he led the ParentTeacher Organization at H.O. Wheeler elementary school, which had the highest number of free and reduced-rate lunches in the state.

The PTO had two members when McGowan became president; within a few years, the group counted 140 parents. Jane Knodell, a former Burlington City Council president and longtime UVM professor, said McGowan had a huge impact on engagement in the schools. “I hold so much honor for him for that,” she said.

The PTO effort morphed into a study of demographics at Wheeler and a recognition that the Old North End needed a better socioeconomic balance with other schools in the city.

McGowan led a committee that came up with a magnet-school concept for Wheeler, which became the Integrated Arts Academy; and Lawrence Barnes School, now known as the Sustainability Academy at Lawrence Barnes. Today, students from other parts of the city gravitate to those magnet schools.

While McGowan worked 10-to15-hour days running ShoeLess Konstruction and Watson coordinated the Pottery Co-op at UVM’s Living and Learning Center, they opened their house to the neighborhood. The doors were unlocked. Kids came and went when they needed a listening ear or a place to hang out. Dinner was at 6 p.m., usually prepared by one of the kids. Four neighborhood boys became fixtures in the household and soon were incorporated into the daily routine and family vacations.

Stu McGowan and his crew working on a house in 2005

STU’S APPROACH IS COMMUNITY DRIVEN. HE REALLY CARES ABOUT HIS TENANTS. E R IK H O E K S TR A

“I was never bored at home or at work,” Watson said.

“Joan was pivotal in encouraging Stu to expand the idea of community and family,” recalled Steve Fuchs, a former business partner at McGowan’s startup, a youthcentered educational video production company called the NoodleHead Network.

When kids started showing up at their house, Fuchs said, Watson’s attitude was “We should take these kids in.”

In the mid-2000s, as the brood graduated from high school and the couple prepared to send their own two kids — and two nonbiological ones — to

college, McGowan took on a new challenge: transforming houses into affordable condos.

That business model worked for a while. McGowan bought abandoned buildings and converted them into condos that sold for $140,000 to $170,000 — an attainable price point for first-time homebuyers. Between 2004 and 2008, he sold 35.

But when the Great Recession hit in 2008 and banks tightened mortgage requirements, the condo business fell flat. McGowan pivoted back to management of his 30-some apartment

buildings. At the high point, he had 78 units. Eleven years ago, McGowan stopped rehabbing buildings and closed ShoeLess Konstruction. During the pandemic, his sister and brother-in-law took over management of the rentals.

Shifts in the real estate business are par for the course, as far as McGowan is concerned. A serial entrepreneur, he relishes the adventure of making something from nothing. The NoodleHead Network, for example, started in “the bunker,” aka McGowan’s basement. His big idea was to let middle school kids script, act in and produce videos about life in other countries, in conjunction with school-sponsored trips. He and Fuchs produced 30 videos that were distributed to large school districts around the country.

A more recent venture, now on hold, is ShareYourself, an online mutual-aid platform for startups.

McGowan said he sees himself as a community organizer who just happened to run businesses. But his mainstay, renting apartments, has become a lot tougher over the past five years. Hoekstra, who also has a large rental portfolio through Redstone, said costs have gone up significantly. Tax rates surged 9.5 percent this year, insurance premiums are climbing due to exorbitant construction costs and climate impacts, and petty crime in the city has spiked, he noted. The average value of a single-family home in Burlington shot up 56 percent in 2022, according to an analysis by Seven Days.

In 20 years, McGowan had not increased rents for tenants who stayed with him (one renter was paying $680 a month for a three-bedroom apartment).

But when taxes went up in 2022, he was unprepared for the sticker shock and had no choice but to increase rents.

“It was difficult financially,” McGowan said. “The tax increase was a financial hardship that almost ended us.” He criticized the city for not giving landlords, and their tenants, time to adjust. “If you want good, affordable housing,” he said, “taxing the guys supplying it is not a great idea.”

McGowan righted the ship with incremental increases, and now the rentals cover his costs.

“I’m not running away,” he said of his decision to sell his buildings. It was just time to “cash out” and move on to the next adventure.

At the moment, that has taken the form of a three-story, pyramid-shaped playhouse in Alburgh. It’s a cross between a hideout and a treasure-hunt palace, with a firehouse pole and secret passageways. McGowan started the project in 2021, before he had grandkids.

Now he has four under the age of 4, and he’s ready for playtime. ➆

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Grow Pro

An audience of about 25 listened raptly on an early summer evening as Red Wagon Plants owner Julie Rubaud spoke about how to draw hummingbirds to the garden. Seated in a large circle on the back patio of the Hinesburg nursery’s bake shop, attendees handed a tiny, finely woven nest from palm to palm as Rubaud talked animatedly.

In Hinesburg, Julie Rubaud has nurtured Red Wagon Plants into a thriving business and community hub

BY M EL I SSA PASAN E N • pasanen@sevendaysvt.com

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF LISA CASSELL-ARMS

Red Wagon Plants owner Julie Rubaud at her Hinesburg nursery

Salvia, she said, have “nice long necks” perfectly shaped for the ruby-throated birds’ long, nectarseeking tongues.

“Their tongues go in and out like 13 times a second,” she said.

“It’s just whacked, just astounding.”

For more than an hour, Rubaud, 55, enthusiastically described plants and offered tips for creating hummingbird magnets with as few as one pot on a balcony. She guided participants — who had each paid $30 for the workshop, including light refreshments and a $5 coupon — through a living catalog of varieties in the nursery’s gardens and greenhouses.

Rubaud pointed out “stunning” hyacinth bean vines and “elegantly selfseeding” beardtongue. “I love this plant,” she said fervently of a shade-tolerant upright fuchsia called Gartenmeister.

Workshops are among the wealth of ways customers engage with Rubaud’s 20-year-old operation, which sells — on-site and through about two dozen local retailers — vegetable and herb plants; annual and perennial flowers and shrubs; and herbs, herb salts, vinegars and teas. At its Hinesburg farm, a newly erected building hosts a top-notch bake shop, along with other food and activity pop-ups. The nursery’s annual calendar is packed

GARDEN IN G

Red Wagon Plants nursery in Hinesburg

with nearly 40 educational events, from basket weaving to planning perennial gardens.

On a recent busy Saturday, customers flitted between greenhouses and the bake shop, which serves fresh breakfast sandwiches, salads, and excellent house-baked pastries and breads, such as pistachio-cardamom cookies and dark chocolate sourdough rolls.

Children played in the large sand pile and creek, under a box elder pruned especially for climbing.

“These are the two happiest places to go shopping: a nursery and a bakery,” Linda Yih of Shelburne said. “Who is not smiling here?”

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of Vermont senior, she helped with harvests at Diggers’ Mirth Collective Farm. During a year of travel, Rubaud had realized she was drawn to “little farms and community gardens,” she said. “That was what really sparked me.”

Support the businesses Raised in Vermont by French expat who support our work. parents, Rubaud said she grew up eating 31 Market Street, Williston, VT from her family’s gardens and learning ublocal.com • 802-318-7395 the value of fresh, simply prepared food kdeforge@ublocal.com through her palate.

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IT WAS MY DREAM TO HAVE A MULTIFACETED BUSINESS THAT WOULD INCORPORATE FOOD SOMEHOW. J U LIE RU BAU D

Thanks to Rubaud’s warmth, expertise and passion, Red Wagon has narrowed the gap between business and community hub. At its crux is a deep bench of employees who care as much about plants and nature as their boss does.

“She’s got a touch of genius about her,” said hummingbird workshop attendee Clem Nilan, a Burlington resident and longtime customer. Beyond his admiration for Rubaud’s intense work ethic and ability to pinpoint how best to serve gardeners, Nilan underscored Red Wagon’s exceptional service at every level.

“Julie has a gift with people,” Nilan said. “She’s genuine. She’s adept at really communicating.”

Nilan has known Rubaud for more than two decades, from the start of her farming career in Burlington’s Intervale in the mid-1990s. As a University

racks, now used to cure herbs with salt for Red Wagon’s herb salts. His heavy stainless steel Longines watch is always on her wrist. It doesn’t keep time well — probably because of all the soil and water it endures, she noted ruefully — but she wears it anyway.

Her mother, Nane Doll-Peyron, taught French at UVM. Now 86, DollPeyron still helps fold all the nursery’s to-go plant boxes — “thousands and thousands of them,” Rubaud said.

The business that became Red Wagon grew out of a side gig. After deciding to forgo philosophy graduate studies, Rubaud worked for six years at Diggers’ Mirth. The farm had a stand at the Burlington Farmers Market, but early in the season, when vegetables were scarce, Rubaud sold herb plants in clay pots from a folding table.

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From the beginning, she distinguished herself by offering uncommon herbs like those her parents had grown, such as chervil, First Cleaning 10% OFF recalled customer Alexandra Lehmann Greater Burlington Area of Charlotte. “She was a little bit different and always so warm,” Lehmann said.

After Rubaud bought land in Starksboro in 2000 with her thenpartner, fellow Intervale farmer Eric Rozendaal, she was able to expand her sales through nurseries and grocery and hardware stores. “We called it Eric and Julie’s Plants and Produce,” she said. The couple split in 2005; Rubaud kept the plant side of the business and Rozendaal 6v-JNGcleaning011525.indd 1 1/9/25 4:08 PM continued with the Starksboro vegetable operation, which he ran as Rockville Market Farm until his untimely death in 2018.

Seeking a new home for her business, Rubaud learned of a parcel for lease on Shelburne Falls Road. There she built her first three greenhouses in 2005.

Rubaud and Rozendaal’s daughter, Louissa, then 7, came up with the name Red Wagon after seeing the movie Bewitched with Rubaud and her nowwife, Uli Schygulla.

It will surprise no one who knows Rubaud that she always insisted on staying to watch the credits, out of respect. At the very end, she recounted, Red Wagon Productions scrolled by, say you saw it in “and Louissa yelled out, ‘Red Wagon Plants!’”

For the first year in Hinesburg, Red Wagon sold plants only wholesale. But, Rubaud said, “People kept driving by

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and saying, ‘Oh, I buy your plants at Healthy Living. Can I buy them here?’”

The business has grown slowly but steadily, adding greenhouses — there are now 12. After supplementing her income for years with off-farm jobs, Rubaud said Red Wagon is now on firm financial footing. Success means she can pay her employees well, donate thousands of plants to local nonprofits and invest in Red Wagon.

In 2021, Rubaud bought 30 acres across the road. A year later, she was able to buy the farm’s original five acres and finance her first year-round building. It houses a full commercial kitchen, an event space, and a headquarters for the six year-round staffers and two dozen seasonal employees.

“It was my dream to have a multifaceted business that would incorporate food somehow,” Rubaud said.

“She always had this quiet, long-term vision,” said her customer Lehmann, who recalled being impressed when Rubaud revealed that she enjoyed “sitting with the numbers.”

For her legions of devoted customers, Red Wagon is about the variety of plants, most of them grown from seed at the nursery, as well as the expert counsel they can expect from staff.

Red Wagon excels particularly in its herb and vegetable selection, Rubaud said, noting that her core mission has always been to teach and encourage people “to grow your own food and

do it well.” Where else, she asked rhetorically, can one find the traditional Mexican herbs pápalo and epazote?

Gardeners can also pick up seven kinds of thyme, six kinds of rosemary, 70-some tomato varieties and 48 peppers — from small, sweet, golden Le Petit Marseillais to the thick-skinned Italian heirloom called Giant Marconi.

But Rubaud knows Vermonters love their flowers, too, which the nursery produces in abundance through the summer for succession planting.

In July and August, she said, Red Wagon has new batches of zinnia, cosmos and a harvest sheaf of black-eyed Susan varieties in shades of gold, yellow and bronze. Late summer is a good time for planting perennials and refreshing planters with heat-tolerant annuals such as lantana, euphorbia and salvia — for the hummingbirds!

During the hummingbird workshop, Rubaud led the group to a corner outside the greenhouse where a sign read, “First Year Perennials: budget friendly, plant en masse.” The collection — which included spiky flowered wild bergamot, foxglove beardtongue with white cupped blooms and feathery Culver’s root — is grown from seed by employee Chad Donovan, who has a deep interest in native meadow ecosystems.

One of her goals with the workshops is to help gardeners “see the easy-tomiss plants,” Rubaud said. Those are often eclipsed by what she described with sly humor as the showier “tits and ass” varieties, many bred for big, bright blooms that earn royalties for their corporate engineers.

“Help me fight the system,” she entreated her audience, who lapped it up as eagerly as hummingbirds sucking nectar from bee balm. ➆

INFO

Red Wagon Plants, 2408 Shelburne Falls Rd., Hinesburg, 482-4060, redwagonplants.com.

Open daily through September 28, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. The bake shop now has reduced summer hours and scheduled breaks; check website for updates.

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