It’s A Year Colored Ruby For Planters’ Choice Nursery

Chuck Newman started Planters’ Choice in March 1970 with one propagation house and two 50-foot hoop houses on Huntingtown Road in Newtown. Today the full-service wholesale nursery consists of 275 acres across five different locations in Fairfield and Litchfield Counties. It is a wholesale landscape supplier for Fairfield, Litchfield, and Hartford Counties, and also extends into New York and occasionally Boston.

For this, the anniversary associated with rubies, passersby of Planters’ Choice might not be surprised to find new plantings along the road’s edges that include Exotic Ruby, a Phalaenopsis characterized by its red purple-colored flowers with darker red purple-colored labellum; accented perhaps with some Panicum Ruby Robbins, or Switch Grass, which blooms in the spring with soft blue-green foliage but takes on a wine-red/burgundy color by late summer.

While any of that may or may not happen, Mr Newman and his staff celebrated the nursery’s 40th anniversary on Friday, March 5, with cake and coffee during the crew’s 3 pm coffee break.

The nursery’s holdings now includes its main farm of 90 acres at 140 Huntingtown Road, with 25 acres devoted to sales yard and nursery container production, and 88 hoop houses; and the 40-acre Meadowbrook Farm, also in Newtown, with 12 acres in nursery container production and 68 hoop houses.

Irrigation is handled in Newtown by two ponds and three wells at the Huntingtown Road location, and by one pond and four wells at Meadowbrook. Huntingtown Road also includes a 15-acre sales yard that offers a complete line of nursery stock, as well as a diverse line of hard goods.

A $40,000 grant from the state Department of Agriculture allowed the nursery to construct a new four-bay, gutter-connected greenhouse in 2007. Such an addition, General Manager Dave Goodwin told The Newtown Bee in June 2007, would offer “improved ventilation, higher efficiency, and provide easier temperature control over a larger area.”

The field production operations are located in Woodbury and Watertown. There is a farm at 496 Bunker Hill Road in Watertown that consists of 45 acres, with 25 for inground nursery stock and ten acres for perennial production and sales yard; the circa 1450 Bunker Hill Road farm, also in Watertown, which devotes 45 of its 55 acres to inground production; and the Woodbury farm, the first property acquired after Mr Newman established the Huntingtown Road property in Newtown, with 40 acres and 32 in production.

The perennials are propagated and grown in Watertown.

All of this acreage is owned by Planters’ Choice, and all of its product is sold through its two sales yards, one of which is in Newtown and the other in Watertown.

“Beginning with a bunch of liners and rooted cuttings, Planters’ Choice started in March 1970. The nursery has survived three recessions and we are in the middle of a fourth, a real whopper,” Mr Newman wrote in his annual essay for the 2010 Planters’ Choice catalog.

“Over the years nine tracts of land have been purchased, totaling 260-plus acres, of which six tracts are in production in Newtown, Woodbury and Watertown,” he continued. “A total of about 120 acres are of crops such as evergreens, shade and flowering trees, perennials and woody ornaments.”

Mr Newman’s essay also mentions the nursery’s past and present, among them the physical efforts through the years that built up the business’s assets, tractors and potting machines, a new production greenhouse for propagation, as well as the recent addition of a new office for planning and sales.

He also addresses the future, naming his successor.

“I have seen so many businesses fail when there is not a person in line to take the reins in a succession plan,” wrote Mr Newman. “In so many instances the cost of buying a business and inventory is too overwhelming an experience to keep the establishment profitable.

“Darryl is Planters’ Choice logical person to carry the business into the future phase,” he wrote.

Darryl Newman has been the sales manager for Planters’ Choice since October 2004.

While the nursery itself targets the wholesale industry, gardeners of all backgrounds can find helpful information in the Problem Solver section of the Planters’ Choice website (PlantersChoice.com). There, visitors can find suggestions in the site’s Perennial Finder, Bark Coverage Calculator, Container Weights, Growth Standards, Hardiness, Plant Sizes and Weights, and Plant Spacing sections.