Two Gold wins for Best Gardening Store/Nursery (2023 and 2025) is a dominant showing in a category where the Finger Lakes competition is fierce — this is serious gardening country, and the voters know the difference between a garden center that sells plants and one that understands them. Vermi-Green, based on Yellow Mills Road in the eastern Finger Lakes, has built its reputation on something more fundamental than pretty flats of annuals: soil science, composting, and the organic growing practices that produce genuinely better results.

The name is the tell. Vermi-Green's roots are in vermicomposting — the use of worms to produce rich, living compost that transforms garden soil from the ground up. That foundation in soil health informs everything the nursery does, from the plants it grows to the products it stocks to the advice its staff provides. In a gardening world increasingly aware that healthy soil is the foundation of healthy plants, Vermi-Green was ahead of the curve. The nursery stocks the annuals, perennials, vegetables, and herbs that every garden center carries, but it also offers the soil amendments, composts, and organic inputs that serious growers seek out.

For the Finger Lakes gardener who has moved past the beginner phase and wants to understand why things grow rather than just hoping they do, Vermi-Green is the destination. The staff can talk soil biology as fluently as they discuss plant selection, and the products reflect an operation that practices what it preaches. Two Gold wins in three years is not a fluke — it is the region's gardening community recognizing a nursery that operates on a different level than the seasonal pop-up garden centers and big-box alternatives.