This story ran 4/26/2012 on Dane101.com

Customers at Four Star Video Heaven might have noticed a different kind of new release popping up on shelves and flooding the front windows in recent weeks: instead of neat rows of white boxes, it’s a riot of green, with rosemary, azaleas, cacti, and a wealth of other herbs and houseplants.

The plants aren’t just decoration. They’re for sale, along with seed starter materials, trellis and kits for raised beds, reference materials for beginners, and and as the weather warms up, owner Lisa Brennan said, they’ll start selling vegetable starters alongside the herbs and houseplants. Brennan will run the business with arborist Sean Gere, who has his own tree care business.

It’s not the first time Four Star has had something besides movies on the shelves: as Brennan points out, original owner David Smith actually started it in 1985 as a bookstore, Four Star Fiction and Video, with a small collection of movies on the side.
This, time, though, it’s actually a case of two businesses sharing one roof. “Naturally we considered names like Movies with a Plot, Rear Window Box, Hollywood & Vines, Pistil Packin’ Mama, and Soilent Green, but we ultimately resisted the urge to pun and settled on Sprout,” Brennan said.

(read full text)