I am very proud to be celebrating Crocker Nurseries’ 50th year in business. Today’s nursery, which spreads across 7 acres, has gotten here from gradual expansion and renovation since I first started to clear the land in 1975. The idea of the nursery originated when I was in college with my then wife, Vicki Crocker. We were both interested in the horticulture field, having worked at local nurseries and with landscapers during summers. We had an idea to create a plant nursery where plants were labeled as to what they were (which was not an industry standard at the time), a place that was clean, organized, with knowledgeable staff and had display gardens to showcase various plants and how they grew. In college we both majored in business and took as many electives as we could in botany, horticulture and landscape design. In fact, the business plan we used to start the nursery was one Vicki created for her college class.
The land we used for the nursery originally belonged to my grandfather Henry T. Crocker, who acquired it when he owned the Brewster Store and a customer asked him to be an executor of her estate with the land as payment. I knew about this land and purchased it from my father and got to work clearing the land the summer after I graduated college. By the fall we started building the original Garden Shop and lathe area (which is now our office space) and then built the potting shed and glass greenhouse (now the Garden Shop) as seen in these pictures. The front waterfall was also put in, though it looks quite different today as the landscaping filled in. By the spring of ’76 all of this was finished and we were open for business with a gross income of $33,000 our first year (and a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches). I also was doing landscaping to supplement the income of the nursery (though this ended in ’83).
Over the next few years, we continued to clear the land and created an area for annuals and perennials behind the greenhouse, a tree field (where the upper parking lot is now) and built the barn for storage. Our neighbor, Williams Oil, had sold to Hall Oil who consolidated operations to their Dennis location and sold us the land in ’81. With a few renovations to the building, and adding two growing greenhouses, we were able to grow our first crop of annuals for the spring of ’82 (including our very first crop of geraniums). We still call this building ‘Williams’ to this day as a reference to its past.
Following the success of our growing operations, we cleared more area to add another growing greenhouse, which is where we just had our perennial sale last month. This added another 5000 square feet of growing space, which we use every inch of.
The next large expansion happened in ‘90-91. Having the greenhouse and retail benches across the parking lot from the cash register was becoming a problem as we expanded. Additionally, the staircase down to the greenhouse was causing problems for customers. We took out the glass greenhouse and created one large Garden Shop and cash register area out of that same space. Next to it we installed a much larger retail greenhouse. The original Garden Shop was then expanded and used solely as office space.
The final expansion to what the retail area is today happened in 2005-06. An issue we ran into as we got busier every year was that the position of our registers created a long line that would back up into the greenhouse. This caused difficulty for people still shopping to get around the line. Additionally, with more and more choices for products in the Garden Shop (soils, fertilizers, pesticides, pottery and decorative items) we needed more room, plus we wanted to add public restrooms. We ended up converting the greenhouse into additional shop area and expanded it even further to include a larger checkout area. We also installed automatic doors for ease of shopping. The new greenhouse attached to the Garden Shop is almost double the size of the one we had before, and then the 60×80’ canopy area was built to help protect the annuals in the Spring from cold temperatures, frost and excess rain. As part of this expansion we moved the tree field from in front of the barn to behind the glass canopy which allowed us to double the upper parking lot, which is much appreciated on a busy May weekend!
From the beginning and through every expansion the goal has always been to create an ideal shopping experience for our customers. In addition to the physical expansions, our success would never have happened without the contribution of the hundreds of employees we’ve had over the last 50 years, with many spending 10+ years with us (Dave Shea, our current record holder, just reached 30 years with us last year!). Lastly, none of this would be possible without our amazing customers, some of whom have been with us since the very beginning. In appreciation of your help getting us to this milestone, we hope you will celebrate our 50th year with us on June 22nd where we will have refreshments, food trucks, music and fun.
David Crocker, MCH | Owner