Puyallup nursery is city’s ‘best kept secret.’ It will close after over 50 years
The owners of Vassey Nursery in the Puyallup area announced this week that the center will close permanently in the fall after over 50 years of operating.
The garden center sits within a Puyallup-area neighborhood at 2424 Tacoma Road E. with colorful plants, pots in various sizes, trees of different kinds, a greenhouse and a pond filled with koi fish around Charlotte and Steve Vassey’s former house. Their son now owns the house at the nursery, but decades ago it belonged to Steve Vassey’s father, Worth Vassey.
Charlotte Vassey told The News Tribune Wednesday that Worth Vassey started the nursery as a hobby in 1972 while he was working at the Washington State University Extension Center. When Worth Vassey retired, he continued working on the nursery as a hobby without a cash register or price tags displayed on the plants, she said.
“He just had ball and burlap trees in the ground. He grew some geraniums and fuchsias and tomatoes, and not a lot else,” Charlotte Vassey said. “And then Steve was a landscape designer from WSU, and he was doing his landscape design firm. It was called Vassey Landscape Construction.”
Steve Vassey then ran both companies for a couple of years before deciding to put all his effort into Vassey Nursery, Charlotte Vassey said.
“So he has spent the past 35 years building it up to where it is now, which is a shame to let it go, but this is a residential piece that we’re on, and this home has been a Vassey home since 1963 and now third generation is buying the home,” she said.
Charlotte Vassey decided to help Steve Vassey run the nursery this year so he can close it after she retired from teaching at the Sumner Bonney Lake School District in 2025. Vassey said she and her husband are healthy, and they decided they wanted to get out and explore.
“So we just have been very tied to the nursery for our entire lives, and it’s time to get out and explore the world. We have not traveled to Europe. We don’t have enough time to go out on our (sailboat),” she said.
Charlotte Vassey said the nursery has the best staff, with about 15 people on their team. Some of their staff members work in the greenhouse, while others work in the main nursery. Vassey added that after the nursery closes, the older staff may just retire while the younger staff members will move onto similar jobs.
She said that the nursery also has the best customers, and the closure is bittersweet.
“The customers have been amazing. We look forward to seeing so many return customers every year, and we’re always so glad when people say to us, ‘We just found you’ and they wonder why we never advertised,” Charlotte Vassey said.
She added that the nursery stopped advertising years ago because it cost them money, and cost the customers money. Word of mouth has helped the business, with their slogan being: “Puyallup’s Best Kept Secret,” according the nursery’s Facebook page.
Starting July 5, all sales made at the nursery are final. The nursery will have its closing sale beginning July 17.
Charlotte Vassey said the sale will start as 20% off and then increase every two to three weeks until everything is gone.
“Just a big thank you to our customers for their patronage and for appreciating Steve’s specialty geraniums and tomatoes, and repeatedly coming back to us year after year, and bringing their friends and coworkers,” Charlotte Vassey said.
After the closure, the nursery space will become part of the Vassey’s private residence. She said they will not sell any of the property.
