“What are you ladies cooking up today?” Laura Raney, an employee at Eden Market, asks a pair of regular customers as she rings up their purchases on Monday afternoon. When they describe plans for concocting a steak and onion dinner — “similar to what we made last year,” they remind her — Laura advises them to consider adding cherry tomatoes to their recipe, pointing to where the tomatoes sit amidst the rows of fresh produce in Eden Market. She then helps the customers carry their bags to their car and waves goodbye as one of them sings, “I might call you about getting that basil!” before pulling out onto State Road.

Twenty-five years ago when owner Dee Dice set up a small produce stand on State Road, she could not have foreseen it would have morphed into the institution that it has. She decided to start this produce stand after spending some time on the Vineyard working in a flower shop and noticing the abandoned plot of land where Eden sits today. Over the years Eden Market and Garden Center, as most know it now, has become a bustling store and outdoor garden filled to the brim with fruit, vegetables, plants and garden-related products.

“All there used to be here was this tiny shack,” Ms. Dice reminisces. “When we first started, I didn’t really know anything about retail — I had my landlord help me, and I learned most of what I know about plants from my customers.” Gesturing to the bursting pots of hanging flowers and the vast garden with flowers and plants waiting to be sold, 25 years has transformed this abandoned plot of land into something remarkable.

And it is this constant transformation that is what Ms. Dice especially loves about her job.

“We grow a little each year, so it never gets boring,” she says. “While it’s a solid and stable business, we like to try different things, too — at different points we’ve had a bakery, a landscaping business, and a cut flower business. That’s what’s great about having a store like ours: it’s a business that allows you to have other businesses, too.”

Besides widespread changes, there are always seasonal modifications that also prevent any kind of lull in Ms. Dice’s day-to-day tasks. “We change what we sell throughout the year, from greens to pumpkins, spring seedlings to mums,” she says.

Although Ms. Dice calls herself someone who likes to “learn as she goes,” she has certainly used her accumulated knowledge wisely from the start in choosing what directions to take her business. With her degree in nutrition from the University of Connecticut and the tips she learned at food conferences in California, she has been well educated in the world of organic food. She even wrote a food column in a newspaper for six years before deciding to set up shop on State Road. She leverages her knowledge of the health benefits of organic and locally grown produce for the benefit of her customers.

“We’ve always tried to buy local and organic,” Ms. Dice says. “What’s nice is that I think we’ve inspired other businesses on Island to do the same — more markets like ours, with organic and locally grown produce, have started popping up.”

Now that the organic movement is growing more rapidly than ever, Eden Market can say that they were the cutting edge leaders of this movement on Martha’s Vineyard for the past quarter-century.

In honor of the store’s 25th anniversary, Eden is hosting a “tasting celebration” today, August 13, from 4 to 7 p.m. There will be free food donated for the occasion by the store’s many vendors — such as Kitchen Porch, Cakes by Liz, Sid Wainer & Sons, Island Frozen Products, and Pam’s Pesto. Additionally, guests will enjoy games, prizes, a raffle and lessons on how to put together certain meals. Everyone is welcome to attend.

“In a way, it’s a thank-you party,” Ms. Dice says. “A way to thank all of my loyal customers for the past many years.”

She certainly has a following of longtime, devoted customers, but Ms. Dice says she enjoys working with new customers just as much. “I love when someone comes in here and has no idea how to plant but wants to learn,” she laughs. “They remind me of myself when I started!”

As for the future, Ms. Dice says she has plans for the store, “but nothing too specific.” She’s excited that her two daughters — Sienna, 11, and Louisa, 5 — are getting older, because it will make it easier for the three of them to do more traveling in the off-season.

Judging from the change it has undergone in the past quarter-century, there’s a lot of excitement in store for Eden in the upcoming decades.