Home & Design

Two-of-a-Kind: Terrain Home & Garden Shops

Update: As of February 2020, there are seven Terrain shops: the original two (in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, and Westport, Connecticut), and now in Devon, Pennsylvania; and in the Anthropologie stores in Bethesda, Maryland, and in Century City, Palo Alto and Walnut Creek, California. 

WHEN URBAN OUTFITTERS customers grew out of their dorm rooms, they discovered that UO had spawned a sister store, Anthropologie, which had a similar funky but international vibe and could furnish their dinner table and even their more-grown-up wardrobe. When those friendly dinners paid off, young women repaired to UO’s BHLDN, with its edgy but romantic wedding dresses.

And, for the past six years, URBN, UO and Anthropologie’s corporate parent, has followed its customers while they nest and spread out. Hence, Terrain, a two-of-a-kind garden and home shop that sells plants, plus the outdoor furniture in which to enjoy those plants, plus a few nature-inspired accessories and outdoor-life accouterments (think fire pits, melamine plates for backyard picnics).

If you stop to think about the things sold at Terrain (earrings and citronella candles, bath soap and bottles of elderflower pressé), it may not make sense. But when you wander into one of the two Terrains–one in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, the other in Westport, Connecticut–it all makes some crazy kind of sense. If only because, if you’re like me, you wind up wanting to take a whole bunch of stuff home with you. Yes, even though your (ahem) house is stuffed to overflowing and you’ve vowed never to buy one more thing that can’t be consumed immediately or given away.

Which is how I come to own a pair of Michael Aram’s plastic Twig salad servers (for outdoor salads, of course) and Garden Fiesta drinks umbrellas. And have my eye of some of those sedum-planted mats and the String of Pearls succulent vine. Go to shopterrain.com, and you’ll come up with your own list.

–Nancy McKeon



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