Date: Jun 11, 2009 Author: Sarah E. Moran Source: (
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For the first time in 112 years, the Conard-Pyle Co.'s headquarters and most of its greenhouses are all in one place.That's because, in October 2008, the company moved its containerized cuttings to a 3.25-acre state-of-the-art greenhouse that, as one approaches it, looks like a giant white and silver folded accordion.
The company moved its headquarters to the new facility in March, and Steve Hutton, its 58-year-old president, couldn't be happier with the new location atop the verdant hills of southwestern Chester County in Penn Township.
For one thing, the new greenhouse, which cost the company $3.5 million, is drastically curbing energy use.
Typically, greenhouses are energy hogs but this one is not, the soft-spoken, 58-year-old Hutton said during a recent tour. Whereas its old greenhouses, further south on Route 796, chewed through $10,000 in electricity per month, bills for the new greenhouse are rarely above $2,000.
"The old greenhouse was built 30 years ago," Hutton explained. "It wasn't a dinosaur by any means. But its miles of irrigation pipe alone are antiquated, and show you how greenhouse technology has changed in 30 years."
The new place has moveable roofs and a computerized watering system on a monorail system that spritzes new plants several times a day, older ones less than that to avoid root rot. Greenhouse walls retract to four feet to let in the breezes here, one of the highest elevations in Chester County. And the roof parts completely to let in more sunshine and moving air.
Sewer effluent from Penn residents flows into a 13-million gallon Conard-Pyle holding tank, from whence flows all its water for irrigation. The township also bought the company's old acreage and will put it to another use.
Conard-Pyle, which holds more than 200 plant patents, is one of the nation's largest container-grown nurseries.
"We grow perennials, shrubs and woody plants from A to Z," Hutton said, "but no big trees."
Selling only to the wholesale trade, the company debuted its disease-resistant Knock Out rose variety in 2001. Later came the Drift rose, a rambling shrub-like rose that resembles nothing so much as a colorful and creeping groundcover.
The company also developed the famous "Peace" rose, which it brought out in 1945 following the cessation of World War II.
At any one time, Conard-Pyle grows more than 6 million mostly containerized plants at its Chester County facility, on 230 acres in Queen Anne's County, Maryland and at a facility for field-grown roses in California.
The Maryland acreage is just 65 miles due south of Chester County, but its perch, between the moderating Delaware and Chesapeake bays, makes it an even more fertile and temperate place to grow plants than Chester County, Hutton said.
Despite the sad economy, the retail gardening business is booming, Hutton said. "Not so the landscaping business," he noted. "Business is tough for many of our contractor customers."
In all, the company employs 190 seasonal workers during its peak time from March 1 through Labor Day. About 20 people work full-time in corporate headquarters. During the winter, as few as five or six workers still remain in the greenhouses and fields.
Many who toil in the houses and fields are of Puerto Rican and Mexican descent; in Queen Anne's County, they tend to be from Honduras or Guatemala.
On a recent visit, brightly clad women clustered around a table making rose cuttings before dipping the freshly shorn ends into rooting hormone.
Lots of plant breeding and experimentation also takes place at Conard-Pyle. For instance, armed with tiny tweezers and as a clump of visitors watched, a student intern from Temple University's horticultural school meticulously pulled off stamens from a flowering shrub to cross-fertilize it with a more disease-resistant variety.
The company also owns Nova Flora, a small biotech venture whose mission it is to come up with new and different plant varieties.
Rough Greenhouses, Cincinnati, designed the new greenhouse and Happy Construction, Lancaster, built it. Many pieces came pre-cut and were assembled on-site.
Hutton is a third-generation nurseryman; his grandfather Sidney Hutton and father Richard Hutton bought Conard-Pyle from Swarthmore College in 1951, when Robert Pyle's estate deeded most of his assets to his alma mater.
"Suddenly, Swarthmore found itself in the nursery business," Hutton said - a complicated business school administrators knew virtually nothing about. Soon afterward, Hutton's grandfather led the first-ever leveraged buyout in the nursery business when he purchased Conard-Pyle.
His grandson had his first paid business at the nursery when he was 12, pulling weeds and watering plants. "It was a boy's dream, working around here. Tractors, fork-lifts, other things to drive around."
Asked whether he gardens at home, Hutton, laughing, responded, "If you were to see our garden [at the Pocopson home he shares with wife Ann and their son Ian, a rising sophomore at Goucher College], you'd realize it's a very young garden. Our house is relatively new.
"But this year I have big plans," he said, grinning. "I plan to put in a few roses."
No doubt Knock Outs, Star Roses, Drift Roses and a few classic hybrid teas thrown in just for fun.
