Owners Allen and Sally Marshall examine the remaining flowers in their soon to be closed nursery on Huger Street in Columbia. Photo by Amanda Taylor

Sally Marshall has a good idea how the Easter Bunny must feel. She has been delivering flowers and baskets to Grice's customers for the past 15 years.

Now Marshall's bliss is hitting the brakes. The Huger Street produce, flower and accessory market is the latest city retail icon falling victim to progress. The curbside market will close soon after Easter, and Marshall is already missing her customers.

"Whatever the season or holiday, I have loved taking people their presents: their fruit baskets or flowers," said the laid-back business owner, flicking a speck of potting soil off her apron.

Bearing a resemblance to the energizer bunny on the TV commercial, the attractive, lanky proprietor has been going and going, so often and so much she has worn out three vans since 1991.

Marshall has come up with some ingenious ways to cradle her cargo in the van to get her deliveries to their destinations in the same beautiful condition they left Grice's. "I grab whatever I can, cutting boxes up, or down, stuffing things around them so they won't fall over."

Marshall says her inspiration as a business owner is seeing faces light up when she hands over an artistically planted dish garden, healthy plant, or floral arrangement. To be there when the light comes on, she goes to a lot of trouble to keep from leaving the delivery at a desk or with someone other than the intended recipient.

"I wasted almost an hour not long ago thinking the man who was supposed to get our flowers had already been released from the hospital," Marshall said. "I drove around until I replayed in my mind what the receptionist had said."

As it turned out, the man had not left the building; he had only been wheeled out of his room to go have some diagnostic tests done. "Eventually, I went back and asked the right questions, and the man got his flowers."

Relationships have been transacted at Grice's over the past years more than any tomato, hydrangea, fig or fruit basket. "We have not only cultivated personal relationships with specialty vendors, we have responded to what our customers wanted," added architect Allen Marshall, Sally's husband

The Marshalls have made customers feel so at home when they pull into the Huger Street market, they find it hard to keep the gate closed. "Sometimes when I've been down here just to water the plants, people will see me and want to come in and get something," Sally said. "Next thing I know, it's several hours later, and I wasn't even supposed to be open that day."

Allen, principal of Architrave, recalled a time he created a costume for a couple of flamingos that usually made the Grice's plant shed their rookery. "Somebody wanted to use them as a centerpiece, so I dressed them up in pearls and got them over there."

When a customer's child could not find sugar cane for a school project, the Marshalls came through with stalks good enough to earn the student an A on the assignment. Sally was wistful about losing such connections as she flipped through the green index box holding names of customers who go on artichoke alert each fall.

The creative couple has arranged flowers for customers' private luncheons or dinners, for some of the city's most posh events, and regularly for business clients like the Palmetto Club.

While faithful customers are wringing their hands wondering where the summer's butterbeans will come from, the Marshalls continue getting Columbia ready for the season. Hanging baskets, plants and accessories for container gardens, iron work and birdhouses are heading to Columbia patios and gardens.

Soon the Marshalls will divert the energy given to Grice's to family and their mountain home. For Allen Marshall, business as usual will continue at Architrave.