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.
I will continue the story in our next newsletter and you can find an unabridged version on our website. But for now, for the 50th year, I look forward to seeing all of you this spring!
David Crocker, MCH | Owner