Snow's Garden Center.

Overview

Drive out Avon Street Extended on the south side of Charlottesville and you reach seven acres of nursery stock that has been growing plants for Central Virginia yards for a long time. Snow's Garden Center traces its start to 1912, when, by the company's own account, Leroy and Maggie Snow put in their first rows of nursery plants. Five generations later the operation has grown well past a nursery: under the name Snow Knows Outdoor Living, the same family now designs and builds patios, pool surrounds, stone terraces, and whole-property landscapes across the region — with Crozet named right alongside Ivy, Free Union, Keswick, and Earlysville on its list of service towns.

If you know Snow's only as the place you buy a dogwood in April, the rest of what happens here may be a surprise. The garden center and the design-build company are one business, and the plants you'd pick up off the lot are the same specimen trees and native perennials the crews put into the ground on larger jobs.

What they do

The work sorts into a handful of lanes, and the business runs them all under one roof. Landscape design covers full-property master plans, done with 3D visualization and, on estate jobs, collaboration with architects. Hardscaping means the built, permanent things — natural-stone terraces, travertine patios, retaining walls, walkways, motor courts. Pools and outdoor living is the resort end of it: custom pools, outdoor kitchens, fire features, pergola dining. Then there's seasonal garden care — spring and fall cleanups, pruning, mulch and bed-edging, shrub fertilization, seasonal plantings — and a commercial arm handling grounds for offices, HOAs, retail centers, and campuses.

The through-line the company keeps coming back to is that it stays in-house. The same family team that draws the plan builds it, without handing the construction off to subcontractors. On their AI-visualizer feature, you can upload a photo of your own house and see it rendered with a Central Virginia plant palette — dogwood, redbud, boxwood, hydrangea, switchgrass — sized for how a landscape actually looks the day it goes in rather than thirty years later.

The nursery

The plant side is the oldest part of the business and still its front door. Snow's describes its nursery as seven acres of specimen trees, native perennials, and curated shrubs chosen for the Central Virginia climate — Zone 7a, in gardening terms — rather than trucked in from a distant warehouse. That local sourcing is the practical argument for buying here: a plant grown to survive Albemarle County winters and summers is a better bet in an Albemarle County yard than something bred for a milder or harsher zone.

The company backs its plants with a one-year guarantee — if something it planted doesn't thrive through a full growing year, it says it will make it right. On installed landscapes, the crew walks the property again the following spring. For a homeowner, that after-the-sale return visit is the kind of thing that's hard to get from a contractor found online, which is precisely the distinction Snow's likes to draw.

Visiting

The nursery and offices sit at 1875 Avon Street Extended, Charlottesville, VA 22902, a straightforward drive from Crozet down Route 250 and around the south side of town. You can reach them at (434) 295-2159, and the full range of services, the portfolio of finished projects, and the yard-visualizer tool live on the website at snowknows.com.

Hours are Monday through Saturday, 8 AM to 5 PM, closed Sunday — a schedule that suits both the Saturday-morning gardener loading flats into a trunk and the homeowner who wants to walk the lot before committing to a bigger project. Spring is the busy season at any nursery, and it's the natural time to come see what's on the ground, but the design-build side keeps working the calendar year-round, planning the projects that get built once the weather turns. Whether you're after a single tree or a rethink of the whole backyard, the front gate is the same.

More trades & home services in Crozet

Trades & Home Services

Advantage Home Contracting

Home-services contractor in the Crozet area.

Trades & Home Services

Airflow Systems Inc.

Home-services contractor in the Crozet area.

Trades & Home Services

Albemarle Heating & Air

Home-services contractor in the Crozet area.

Trades & Home Services

Alpha and Omega Home Improvement Contracting, LLC

Home-services contractor in the Crozet area.

← Back to the Crozet business directory