Secret Garden blossomed under her guidance

Oak Bluffs store to close with retirement of owner

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Sharon Kelly, left, and Carol Jennings, right, will be smiling behing the counter of Secret Garden until the final item sells.

By George Brennan

Sharon Kelly has that look on her face. It’s a wry smile like she’s got a secret and wants to spill the beans, but it’s not her story to tell.

Ms. Kelly does have a secret — it’s her shop the Secret Garden — but she won’t have it for much longer. The sign in the bottom window gives it away, “Retirement Sale.”

Two years ago, Ms. Kelly announced in an interview with The Times that she was ready to move on. After 36 years selling gifts, trinkets, and treasures on one of the Island’s busiest streets, Ms. Kelly has found a buyer for her building and is looking to close by Thanksgiving — sooner if the stock sells off. She won’t say who the new owner is because it’s an established shop owner who has a lease to settle.

She’ll tell you who it’s not, though.

“My real estate agent calls me the reluctant seller. I’ve been a little picky on who to sell to,” Ms. Kelly said. “I feel like an old maid. It isn’t like I haven’t had offers.”

One suitor was a religious shop. “The atheist in me wouldn’t allow it.” And T-shirts? “There’s already enough of those.”

She said no to seasonal businesses, too. “I didn’t want another dark store in Oak Bluffs,” she said. “I’m still going to live here.”

An ‘amazing run’

It’s a bright, sunny, shoulder-season day, and about four shoppers wearing tour tags squeeze out the door of the Circuit Avenue shop. There’s a lull, a chance to catch her breath and reflect in a conversation with The Times.

“I’ve had an amazing run,” Ms. Kelly said. “It won’t be the Secret Garden anymore, but it wouldn’t have been the Secret Garden anyway.”

She ticks off a list of Edgartown businesses that have come and gone. “Fligors wouldn’t be Fligor’s anymore, either,” she says, a nod to the store that carried just about everything.

Ms. Kelly’s story of how she landed on Martha’s Vineyard is an interesting one. She’s a pilot, has her own plane, and came for a visit. She was looking for a gift and found slim pickings among the T-shirt outlets and hardware stores that dominated Circuit Avenue at the time.

She opened Secret Garden in 1981 while she continued her career as a buyer for a retail store in Connecticut. When Secret Garden took off, she started another store in the Nutmeg State, and for 26 years she commuted back and forth, by plane, between the two.The Connecticut store was eventually sold to a manager, but that wasn’t an option here.

Ms. Kelly’s had good, longtime employees whom she credits for her success. They weren’t interested in buying the business.

Views are no secret

While the store is called Secret Garden, Ms. Kelly never hid her political leanings. When Barack Obama was running for president, she sold Obama bumper stickers and other items to make donations to the Democratic National Committee. She describes the former president and frequent Vineyard visitor as “graceful,” “elegant,” and “a statesman.”

Her views of his replacement are bold and out in the open, too. “Resist!” it says in big letters on the second-floor window of her shop.

That’s posed some problems, particularly this summer when she had women shoppers hauled from the store by their husbands: “You’re not buying anything in this store,” she recalled one man saying. Four men confronted employees one day about the anti-Trump sign, and even told them they should watch out when they closed for the day.

“It’s very horrifying to see it happening on Martha’s Vineyard,” her husband, John, said as he popped into the office for a moment. But the encounters aren’t going to stop her from making her beliefs known. “They’re not shy about offering their positions, and neither am I,” she said.

Ms. Kelly sees herself becoming more of a political activist as her retirement time permits. (She’s also interested in hiking and biking, as well as polishing up her Italian.) “I can’t just sit back and do nothing,” she said.

She still has that pilot’s license, and her husband, though he prefers cars, is a good passenger. She still makes frequent trips to Connecticut, where her mother is about to turn 100 years old.

Ms. Kelly has advice for anyone thinking about taking what she calls the leap of faith to start her own business. “It’s extremely rewarding,” she said. “If you thrive on work, it’s really great.”

She’s grateful to her longtime customers and her employees like Carol Jennings, a 20-year veteran who was behind the register on the first busy day of the retirement sale.

Claudia Metell, who worked in the store for more than 30 years, stopped by to stand in her spot one more time. “I just had to be here,” she said. “It’s the end of an era, but I’m happy for her.”