Copyright berkshireeagle
LEE — Oldcastle Lawn & Garden is one of the area’s largest employers, but most local residents are only dimly aware of the fact that 150,000 tons of limestone are being harvested annually from a quarry in their neighborhood. Until they feel a tiny shake. About every four to six weeks, semiliquid explosives are used to blast away sections of rock at the Lee limestone quarry, fittingly located off of Marble Street. The harvested material will soon be washed, packaged and shipped from the site, becoming the gravel and decorative stone lining the lawns and gardens of homes all over the country. But the company isn’t just making the world more beautiful. It’s saving it, too. The Oldcastle Lawn & Garden location in Lee — often mistakenly referred to by its old name, Oldcastle Stone Products — was recently named a 2025 Mass Save Climate Leader for its commitment to sustainability, reducing emissions and lowering its energy consumption. “You don’t see a lot of environmental awards in a rock quarry,” said Brett Larmon, Oldcastle Lawn & Garden’s vice president of northeast operations. But through a partnership with Berkshire Gas — as well as “hours of doing spreadsheets and doing numbers,” he said — the company last year reduced the rate of dekatherms (units of natural gas) used to produce each ton of stone pellets by an estimated 25 to 30 percent. Oldcastle Lawn & Garden — owned by CRH Americas, which is headquartered in Dublin — is now strategizing to further reduce its consumption of diesel fuels and other resources. Jonathan Pennell, site manager, said he’s gathering data from the company’s utility bills to identify areas where the site can cut down on energy usage. Company leaders accepted the award in Boston on Oct. 15 at the Massachusetts Statehouse, a building ironically made mostly of granite. But many other historic buildings throughout the state — and even the country — incorporate limestone harvested from the Lee quarry. The Lee Lime Corp., founded in 1877, formerly oversaw the quarry and specialized in dimensional stone: larger cuts used for bigger projects such as headstones and buildings. Stone harvested by Lee Lime has cropped up in historical locations throughout the country over the years, according to Pennell, including the U.S. Capitol building, headstones at Gettysburg National Cemetery and even parts of the Washington Monument. At the local level, limestone harvested from the quarry can be found in libraries, town halls and churches throughout Berkshire County. Oldcastle Lawn & Garden today specializes in products that use smaller pieces of limestone and rock, including pond stones, decorative gravel and limestone pellets used to line gardens for better plant growth. They can be found in the garden sections of major retailers like Lowe’s and Home Depot under a variety of brand names, including KolorScape and Soil Doctor. Despite the new name and product lines, history still lurks among the quarry’s strata. The site sometimes turns up relics from the 19th century during routine excavations, including a partially finished headstone that workers recently discovered. Larmon said he grew up in Lee only a mile away from the quarry, but remained unaware of the full scale of its operations like many others in the area. As a youth, his only experience with the property was getting chased off for riding his dirtbike on the premises. He never imagined he’d end up overseeing the site and its stone production one day. But now, Larmon said, “I love the rock business.” He cited its reliable nature as the main factor. “A ton is a ton is a ton,” he said, “It doesn’t change… It makes sense in my brain.” Now, the company hopes to make more residents aware of its history and contributions to the local economy by participating in Founders Day and other nearby events. “We’re doing a lot more outreach than we ever have before,” Larmon said. After joining as an environmental health and safety manager in 2019, Larmon climbed the ranks at the company and now oversees 13 Oldcastle Lawn & Garden sites along the East Coast. The Lee property, his “home base,” stretches across 185 acres, with the quarry taking up 50 of those. The quarry itself appears as a deep crater in the earth, with the layers of limestone in its walls forming a gradient between pure white and smoky gray. The white limestone is coveted for its decorative value, while other shades can be used for garden and soil products. The spring water that wells up in the quarry is additionally repurposed to wash stones. While the quarry will one day be emptied of all its limestone, Larmon estimates that it’ll take more than 50 years to get to that point. By the time it runs out, he joked, “we’ll be dead.” Larmon added that the company also provides the pulverized limestone used to create white lines on athletic fields, which is donated to local schools for their sports programs. He said that several Major League Baseball teams also use the company’s products for this purpose, but declined to state which ones. The site is currently staffed by 45 workers, 34 of whom are union members. For Pennell, his favorite part of working with Oldcastle employees is their “radical candor” on the job. “You can tell them exactly what you need,” he said. “These are really good guys.”
