Shopping in Margate

From the pages of People magazine and The Wall Street Journal, to the desks of celebrities such as Usher, Jason Bateman, and Julie Bowen, to the mailboxes of citizens across the country, Paper Culture’s invitations and stationery transport crucial information in style. Their products range from custom holiday invitations and greeting cards to baby announcements, wedding invitations, and thank you cards. To support sustainability, Paper Culture plants a tree for every order they receive.

Joseph Sirotkin founded DynaServ more than 45 years ago, on the principle that customer service stands out when it comes to landscape maintenance. His staffers are subject to background checks, formal training, and wacky inflatable hurdles before they begin work, during which they proudly wear official uniforms. They install and maintain landscapes for homes and businesses, performing services that include irrigation, pest control, and hurricane restoration. The company’s garden center also boasts 25 acres of plants, pots, figurines, and accessories to outfit green-thumbed shoppers.

Since 1968, Jerry’s Artarama has stocked shelves with multitudes of tools and supplies and helped artists show off finished work with custom framing. The comprehensive inventory fulfills artists’ every need, featuring everything from acid-free blank stretched canvases to Lukas oil colors, which have been transmitting images to paper since 1862. Custom framing services can protect and showcase a diploma, favorite 8”x10,” or beloved box of cereal.

Since 1991, board-certified optometrist Gary Enker has performed more than 20,000 eye exams and 10,000 contact-lens fittings. He has also trained in emergency and pediatric treatment, as well as the fitting of specialty contact lenses and has been commended for his dedication to the field. Dr. Enker draws on that expertise at his eye-care center, where he and a skilled staff test patients' vision with advanced technology and old-fashioned care.

The technicians at the clinic’s onsite eyeglass lab outfit guests with contacts or glasses in about an hour. Clients choose from more than 3,000 pairs of designer frames, which staffers then fill with the proper lenses to suit their needs. The team also offers free routine adjustments for the life of the glasses, from tweaking the fit to adding miniature telescopes.

Flamingo Road Nursery owner Jim Dezell is used to the surprise on people's faces when they come to the nursery for the first time. "People commonly come in and say, ‘Wow, I never knew there was a garden center like this,’" he says. Maybe they're wowed by the park-like landscaping, complete with display gardens designed to inspire shoppers with ideas for plant combinations. Maybe they're blown away at the fountains, statues, and thousands of pieces of pottery. Or maybe they've just seen the pond surrounded by colorfully painted "shops" and palm trees. It's a "true experience" that's as much about shopping as it is about creating "memory and traditions", wrote Today's Garden Center in 2011, when it picked Flamingo Road Nursery as the most revolutionary garden center in the nation. In addition to helping shoppers navigate the selection of flowers, trees, and other plants, the knowledgeable staff can also help them complete landscaping projects with outdoor artwork, waterfalls, and more. "It's professional advice here," says Jim. "We really try to understand our customers' needs and offer solutions that will both excite them and provide long-term enjoyment." He even recommends people bring in dimensions and photos of their space so the staff can get a better idea of what will grow well there. The staffers can even come to homes to install everything once it's purchased. Other garden-centric items, such as Big Green Egg barbecues, give customers more chances to enjoy their updated outdoor spaces. To help home growing projects succeed, one staff member, Jodi (who Jim calls their "garden gal") gives weekly talks on growing your own food at home without the hassle of planting notoriously difficult hamburger bushes. The nursery also hosts an on-site Farmers Market shop, which hosts a large assortment of fresh fruits, vegetables, and artisan foods—some of the produce is even picked at the nursery itself. On the weekends, a beekeeper visits the store to explain how bees make honey to visiting kids, using the in-store observation beehive as a teaching tool. The nursery holds seasonal celebrations as well, including an annual fall festival and a Christmas festival replete with sleigh rides, Santa visits, and a Christmas tree forest.

At each of Advanced Vision Care's five locations, a team of optometric physicians examines peepers of all age brackets for signs of aberration or disease. They then furnish patients with prescriptions that can be formed into contact lenses or slung into stylish frames from the likes of Prada, Lacoste, and BCBG. The staff also performs Lasik consultations, in which they determine candidacy, recommend a Lasik doctor, and provide a series of post-op checks. Most locations house a multilingual team, who can answer questions or reflect on metaphysical quandaries in English, Spanish, or Hebrew.