Brown & Quattrocchi and Pottery Therapy
Don and Zina Brown
Eight years ago, big changes came to Don and Zina Brown's lives - and they happened in the same week. The Jersey Shore residents decided to leave their jobs and pursue their creative passions - he with landscape design and she with pottery - incorporating their businesses just days from one another in 2017.
They haven't looked back.
Married for 11 years (together for 21), the Browns moved to the coast a decade ago. Don was working for a multi-million dollar landscape design firm at the time, and Zina at a local hospital. In her free time, however, she was making pottery.
The hobby came about by chance, when Zina took a pottery class on a whim. She fell in love and kept taking classes, becoming well versed in both throwing and hand building clay.
Once at the shore, Zina discovered a local art studio and started taking pottery classes. In time, she was renting bench space from the studio and teaching classes.
Then, a holiday employee craft show changed everything.
"She had never sold her pottery before - she always gifted it," Don said. "After the show, she came home with an ear-to-ear smile. She sold everything."
That money started a nest fund for what would become Pottery Therapy, Zina's business where she makes gorgeous, seashore-inspired textured platters, floral printed vases, pins and jewelry, wall hangings and decorative door panels.
"Right now my favorite thing to make are ceramic oyster shells. I cut each one out by hand It's always a different shape. I paint them individually. No two are alike," Zina said.
The name Pottery Therapy was chosen because, simply put, pottery is Zina's therapy.
"It is my outlet. Once I start making pottery, I don't think of anything else. It's a great stress reliever," she said.
She finds inspiration everywhere, mostly in the beauty of nature.
"Her business is so successful" Don said, pride in his voice. "She'll make 500 lima bean ornaments for the Lima Bean Festival in Cape May. She'll make 500 Christmas ornaments. She'll make 15 platters to go to Brigantine Farmers Market for homeowners to gift or use."
Zina sells her pottery every Saturday at the Brigantine Farmers Market, at Stainton's on Asbury in Ocean City, and is available for custom pieces that can be shipped or picked up.
The same year Pottery Therapy started, Don and business partner and horticulturist Paul Quattrocchi started Brown & Quattrocchi Landscape Group.
The business, in a way, far predates the 2010s - Don had his first landscape design business when he was only 16 years old and in high school. It was a hobby-turned-company that grew over the years, including while he was a student studying landscape architecture at the University of Maryland, and one that he ultimately sold in 2007 when he took a job with a huge landscape design firm, doing work in Central Park in New York City, National Harbor in Washington, D.C., and other high-profile places.
Ten years ago, Don and Paul - who knew each other through the landscape design and horticulture profession - started tossing around the idea of starting their own company. They took the plunge with their design-build business, meaning they design the projects, and oversee from concept to completion.
"We oversee the hardscaping. We subcontract the pools. We manage the whole thing, and then we come in afterward and do all the planting," Don said.
Aside from large scale projects and installs, they service some properties monthly, and others they're pruning and detailing up to twice a week.
"Paul and I are very hands-on. We're very approachable. I think that's what clients love - the two owners are designers," Don said.
They also stay on top of the latest and greatest techniques and trends in the landscape design field, ensuring projects are fresh and unique. Much like Zina's pottery.