Back to All Events

Fortieth Anniversary Open House

Please stop by for a cup of hot cider or organic coffee and help us celebrate our 40th year as Native Nurseries. We will have a wheelbarrow full of our Supreme Blend birdseed and each family may scoop and bag your own small bag for free. All native trees and shrubs will be 20% off. Children may make pinecone suet feeders. Due to our limited parking situation, we are spreading the open house out over 3 hours. We will have a drawing every half hour beginning at 2:30pm and ending at 4:30pm for one of our favorite books, Bringing Nature Home – How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants by Doug Tallamy (this book validates all that we have been doing at Native Nurseries for 40 years), a bag of peanut splits (the birds love them) and a wildflower. We will cut the anniversary rosemary cake and share a few words with the best customers in the world. Then at 5pm we will draw from all the names collected throughout the day for one winner of our favorite Droll Yankees squirrel-proof birdfeeder set up (pictured at right) – a $158.00 value.

PARKING: Please use driveway next door to the nursery with 'Workshop Parking' sign seen from Centerville Rd.

Dear Friends,

Forty years. It sure went by fast. Forty years of making a living doing exactly what we loved – planting native plants, attracting birds and other wildlife and gardening organically. Forty years of providing about 15 great employees with a livelihood. I hope we have also provided our customers with lots of happiness, beautifying your landscapes with plants, making them more ecologically sound and helping you attract birds, bees and butterflies to your yards.

We have many people to thank for making the nursery a success. First – our many loyal customers – YOU! Some of you come every week for birdseed or our homemade suet cakes, some once a month for a native plant to add to your yard, some each spring for butterfly plants or caterpillars and some only each December for a Christmas tree. All these loyal repeat visits have kept us going.

Each employee has brought his or her unique talents and energy to the nursery and we have encouraged them to spread their wings while here, which has led to excellence in all our departments. Each employee has added something and has shaped Native Nurseries into what it is now.

Finally, we want to thank all the people who have provided us with outstanding native plants, grown from seed or cuttings, and organically grown herbs and vegetable plants over the years. The late Chuck Salter was our first native plant grower and we thank him for helping us get started. Thanks also to the Webb family of Superior Trees, to wildflower growers Jan and Collier Clark, Melanie Darst, Dan Miller and our current wildflower grower Vanessa Crisler. Thanks to good friend B O’Toole of O’Toole’s Herb Farm for a great run with herbs and veggies and to our current grower Jessie King (who also grew up in the Native Nurseries family – Norma’s daughter). All LOCAL growers!

We (Donna and Jody) have recently retired and currently serve as volunteers on most Saturdays. The nursery is now in the capable hands of three young, but longtime employees – Joe Walthall (our son who grew up in the business), Elizabeth Georges and Seth Dunaway. Joe and Elizabeth manage the retail end, while Seth manages the landscaping division. Here’s hoping for another 40 years led by the younger generation.

A warm and heartfelt thank you from,
Donna and Jody Joe, Seth and Elizabeth
Liz, Norma, Brian, Timothy, Lilly, Jordan, Chase,
Ben, Ethan, Lizzy, Louie, Mark, Jackson