A & G Nurseries history

↑ J. B. [John Beale] Bordley, Essays and Notes on Husbandry and Rural Affairs, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson, 1801), view on Zotero.

In his autobiography, Thorburn mentioned that he first saw a seed catalogue in late 1805, when a man from London sold him a package of seeds containing a catalogue from William Malcolm & Co., London.2 Thorburn studied it carefully, noting that sowing times were written in the margins.

Seedling nurseries in coastal Virginia and South Carolina were in operation as early as 1750, but it was not until 1806 that an apple nursery came to North Carolina.

Horticulture, Judge Buel observes, received but little attention in the United States until quite a recent period. . . Four or five public nurseries are all that are recollected of any note, which existed in the United States in 1810, and these were by no means profitable establishments.

About the year 1815, a spirit of improvement in horticulture as well as agriculture began to pervade the country, and the sphere of its influence has been enlarging, and the force of example increasing, down to the present time. (Gard.

↑ William Coxe, A View of the Cultivation of Fruit Trees, and the Management of Orchards and Cider (Philadelphia: M. Careyard, 1817), view on Zotero.

Neither one contains illustrations, although an 1820 Thorburn catalog in the Library of Congress contains an illustration of a greenhouse and is the oldest known illustration in a pamphlet catalog in the United States1

Waln, Robert, Jr., 1825, describing the Friends Asylum for the Insane, near Frankford, PA (1825: 232)

According to J. C. Loudon (1826), nurseries in gardens united “the agreeable with the useful,” which was, for him, the object of gardening.

John Galt, Lawrie Todd, or The Settlers in the Woods (New York, J&J Harper, 1830). Much of the first volume of this novel was transcribed from the manuscript of Thorburn’s biography.

↑ Alexander Gordon, “Notices of Some of the Principal Nurseries and Private Gardens in the United States of America, Made during a Tour through the Country, in the Summer of 1831; with Some Hints on Emigration,” Gardener’s Magazine and Register of Rural & Domestic Improvement 8, no.

Gordon, Alexander, June 1832, “Notices of some of the principle Nurseries and private Gardens in the United States of America,” describing the nursery of James Bloodgood and Co., vicinity of Flushing, NY (Gardener’s Magazine 8: 280)

Grant Thorburn, Forty Years Residence in America, or, The doctrine of a particular Providence exemplified in the life of Grant Thorburn (London, James Fraser, 1834) 96.

Stuart says, ‘the variety of magnolias in Prince’s nursery is prodigious.’ In 1840, however, the hothouses and greenhouses belonging to this nursery appear to have been given up, and the plants sold off.

↑ John Warner Barber and Henry Howe, Historical Collections of the State of New York . . . with Geographical Descriptions of Every Township in the State (New York: S. Tuttle, 1841), view on Zotero.

Hovey and Co., 1845, describing their nurseries in Cambridge, MA (1845: 3)

Alfred Hoffy, South View of the Old Landreth Nurseries, Philadelphia, 1847.

Loudon, J. C. (John Claudius), 1850, describing nurseries in America (1850: 335, 339)

Thorburn’s second autobiography is Life and Writings of Grant Thorburn, New York, Edward Walker, 1852.

April 18, 1865 Agreement April 26, 1865 Agreement Military Convention of April 26 Parole Signed by the Officers Troops in NC at time of Surrender

In 1874, N. W. Craft opened his Cedar Cove Nursery in the Yadkin County community of Red Plains.

Takanoshin Domoto landed in San Francisco on 18 November 1884.

Three of his brothers soon followed and by 1885 they were growing chrysanthemums and carnations at their small nursery in Oakland.

Their business thrived and in 1892 the brothers bought two acres in Oakland’s Melrose district on Central Avenue (now 55th) and East 14th Street.

In 1902 the Domoto Nursery expanded again, this time to a larger site on Krause Street in the Oakland foothills.

In 1906 the Japanese flower growers organized the California Flower Growers Association with 42 charter members.

Japanese flower growers enjoyed continued success in the post-war years, producing 70 percent of the major greenhouse flowers and chrysanthemums in Northern California in 1929.

The completion of the Bay Bridge in 1936 made it easier for the East Bay growers to sell their flowers in San Francisco.

Oakland Nursery was founded in 1940 on Maize Pike in Columbus, Ohio.

Business was steadily improving when, in December of 1941, the Japanese flower growers along with all people of Japanese descent on the West Coast had their lives turned upside down by the aftermath of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

The nursery was relocated in 1950 by its founder, Gustav Reiner, to its current location on Oakland Park Avenue.

↑ Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson, eds., The Puritans, 2 vols. (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), view on Zotero.

In 1974, the board of directors appointed Don L. Rogers the new president.

Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, 6 vols. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978), view on Zotero.

Alameda County alone had 10.11 million square feet of greenhouses in 1980.

Fenwick, George, May 6, 1641, in a letter to Governor John Winthrop, describing his nursery in Saybrook, CT (quoted in Hedrick 1988: 31)

↑ Barbara Wells Sarudy, “Eighteenth-Century Gardens of the Chesapeake,” Journal of Garden History 9 (1989): 104–59, view on Zotero.

Northern California nurseries began rapidly closing and by 1995 greenhouse footage in Alameda County had dropped to 1.95 million with only 30 or 35 nurseries still in operation.

1 (January–March 1996): 3–22, view on Zotero.

On March 4, 2008, Armstrong Garden Centers, a nationally recognized chain of independent garden centers from California, purchased the retail assets of Pike Nurseries and breathed new life into the business.

In 2009 only a little over one million square feet were under glass in Alameda County.