American fruit growers have worked for generations, with support from our universities and the USDA, to produce fruit plants that have a range of desirable characteristics.  The plants must be hardy, able to endure the widest range of weather conditions and seasonal patterns. They must also be disease and pest resistant since few people desire to use chemical controls. The quality of the fruit is also important, as well as season and taste (a rather intangible thing which varies greatly from person to person) as well as  the size of the plant itself.  One of the interesting things about our business is how many different sorts of tastes there are.

To growers another range of factors became crucial as industries developed, fruiting season, yield was always very important to growers, of course, but also season, when the fruit came.  "Keeping quality"  has been important also and is one key reason why home orchards are so attractive to people.  Fruit is perishable and it is at it's best when picked ripe.  Unfortunately the way of our modern food system is such that fruit can never be harvested ripe and survive the process/time to the consumer.  Today, for instance, your food travels an average of 1,600 miles before it reaches your table.

Consumers have a range of other concerns, chemicals are widely distrusted now and the only way to insure that your food is not affected is to produce it yourself.  The appearance of the bush or tree itself is also a primary concern to the home owner or landscaper whereas the size and appearance of the plants is only interesting to the farmer in so far as it affects cultivation or harvesting.

We have talked with farmers (few know these plants better than those who have lived with them for decades) as well as many specialists to determine which varieties of plants were most appropriate for our customers from the consumers' point of view.  Since we have marketed our plants at all levels and done countless promotional activities involving our plants we have also come to know gardeners and horticulturists needs well.  Our experiences have pinpointed some unique needs of the garden center and landscape industries.

Bare root plants are not practical for a variety of reasons.  In order to successfully transplant them they must be dug and replanted in a matter of days and will not survive the process of conveying them to customers or landscapers.

Our plants are container grown for stronger and healthier root systems that transplant and survive well.  These plants can be held indefinitely at garden centers or landscape yards and will transplant well at any time because their root systems are intact.

We also realized in looking at mature fruit fields how beautiful some varieties were when considered just from this point of view of appearance.  Fruit plants are very beautiful at different times, when the flowers are in their prime, when the fruit is young as well as mature, in the fall when the foliage turns crimson, purple, yellow or brown, in the winter when the canes are crimson or brown or more unusually green as is the case with several blueberry varieties.

Although our specialty is small fruit we also offer a complete line of container grown fruit trees which have been selected particularly for small spaces.  Items such as the 4-Way Apple or 4-Way Cherry which provides four different varieties of fruit on a single tree and Patio Peach trees which reach a mature height of 6 feet are unique additions to your landscape.  More conventional trees have been selected for their practical aspects and will provide fruit for a lifetime.

A basic line of semi-dwarf and dwarf fruit trees are also offered in addition to a number of unique specialty items which include:  patio fruit trees, evergreen ground covers,  as well as a broad range of berries.  We have also added a number of outstanding trees, most of which are technically fruit plants (such as pears such as Cleveland Select or highbush cranberry plants) which are outstanding landscape plants.  One unique offering is a dwarf, weeping redbud, Covey's Lavender Twist, truly an American original.