Chesapeake Nurseries history

Colby was admitted to the bar in 1878.

According to an 1885 newspaper advertisement, Hazelwood sold “shade trees, fruit trees and evergreens of all kinds, grape vines, strawberry, raspberry and blackberry plants, asparagras (sic), etc, all at lowest rates.”

McGredy lived in the home he built on the nursery property until retiring to Scotland in 1888.

He died there in 1890, and his heirs sold the house and acreage for $10,000 to William H. Colby, who had been McGredy’s attorney and agent.

According to Joseph Wallace’s “Past and Present of the City of Springfield and Sangamon County” (1904), Colby “borrowed law volumes from the Hon.

The Hulletts moved into the Southern Air building, and Venette Hullett continued to operate the restaurant after her husband’s death in January 1955.

However, she married a Chicago man, John Oberly, that December, and she sold the restaurant to the Crifasi family in 1956.

Chesapeake Nurseries was started in 1962 with the first propagation in one unheated, deep cold frame.

But in 1973, he decided two full-time careers was one too many and he left the shipyard and dedicated all his efforts to his growing business.

The Southern Air closed with no notice in December 1984.

Dennis Joslin, a Tennessean with extensive restaurant experience, revamped the restaurant’s menu, emphasizing seafood, and reopened it as the New England Lobster House in February 1985.

In 1986, he opened his own garden center — White’s Old Mill Garden Center in Chesapeake — on the same tract of land as he and his wife’s Grower Division.

Chesapeake Natives, Inc. was founded in August 2005 as Chesapeake Native Nursery by Sara Tangren and a group of volunteers on a farm near Davidsonville, in order to promote the local flora of the region.

In July 2011 was reorganized and revitalized under its new Executive Director, Rochelle Bartolomei and she brought the company through several years of transition from the College Park Campus to Rosaryville State Park, via Pope Farm.

Growing native plants at the site commenced in Spring 2013.

Hetty passed away in January 2016.

The company has flourished over the years, but Norm, Dana, Tal and Sheri all realize it is a different market in 2017 and they are making sure their company is well positioned for future success.