Founded in 1898 in Hawthorne, Rosedale Nurseries has been in continuous operation as a family-owned nursery and landscaping resource for nearly 128 years. The nursery also operates a 160-acre farm in the town of Gardiner, Ulster County, and two farms comprising 250 acres in the village of Montgomery, Orange County. The eight-acre retail section of the Hawthorne location is the largest retail garden center in the Westchester-Fairfield area.
Earlier this year, Rosedale was honored with inclusion in the New York Historic Business Preservation Registry, which highlights New York businesses that have been in operation for at least 50 years – businesses that have contributed to their community’s history. Eye on (not so) Small Business was therefore especially pleased to catch up with Dan Taylor, who, following his grandfather and father, now runs Rosedale Nurseries with his wife, Catherine, with their third son, Logan, also working in the nursery.
Rosedale’s retail garden center customers, Taylor told Westfair’s Westchester County Business Journal, are primarily homeowners, estates, landscape contractors and botanical gardens, coming from within about a 60-mile radius of Hawthorne. Landscape customers, he explained, are “higher-end” residential clients and private estates throughout Westchester and Fairfield counties, the Lower and Mid-Hudson Valley region, the rest of the metro area and beyond.
The nursery’s trade account customers are other contractors or private estates that purchase larger, field-grown trees and shrubs from Rosedale’s three farms. Rosedale has shipped its trees and shrubs to customers throughout New England and the mid-Atlantic states and to locations in states as far away as Michigan, Arkansas and Texas.
Just how “seasonal” is the nursery business, we asked the affable Taylor?
“We do have a seasonal business, and some employees prefer to take layoffs and/or vacations during the winter season,” he said. “However, we still need a sizable number of employees during the cold season for a variety of tasks. Preparing the garden center for the spring season; completing office work, landscape budgets, etc., for spring; doing pruning and other landscape work for clients; inventorying and pruning trees and shrubs at our farms; and servicing and repairing trucks and other equipment at our in-house shops.”
Regarding the retail business, he said the garden center was much quieter during the winter, although it continued to sell houseplants, firewood and various garden tools.
Rosedale employs about 90 people, and Taylor is proud of the familial relationship that he and his own family have fostered with them over the years:
“It’s all the people who work here now, and all the people who worked here before us, for whom we are so appreciative and so grateful. Some families have been employed with us across generations. Rosedale has put food on their tables and a roof over their heads, and that’s why we all work here together – as a family.”
Asked about the nursery’s top sellers, and whether there are “fashions” in landscapes and gardening, Taylor said that perennials and annuals in color generally turn over frequently and, therefore, are more profitable. Native plants are an important component of all of Rosedale’s sales, adding that Piet Oudolf – creator of Manhattan’s High Line greenway and a leader of the New Perennial movement – along with other contemporary designers have inspired interest in combining grasses and other perennials with less well-known trees and shrubs, often native, in bold and interesting ways. At the same time, Taylor added, there is renewed interest in English-style gardens, topiary and planting influences as well as designs from the world’s temperate climes.
Looking for your own garden inspiration? Take a leaf, so to speak, out of Taylor’s personal book. His family’s own garden, he told us, “includes boxwoods and American hollies for year-round structure, privacy and deer-resistance.” He said the deep-green colors and strong shapes of these evergreens contrast with a wide range of flowering trees and shrubs.
He also mentioned that a number of pollinator species visit the Taylor family garden, and so they always include a range of salvias, agastaches (giant hyssops) and other species – “for the hummingbirds, which we especially enjoy.”
