A Conversation with North Creek Nurseries’ Steve Castorani
The co-founder of North Creek Nurseries explains how and why native plants and ecological landscaping have become increasingly popular
In the 1980s, Steve Castorani founded North Creek Nurseries with Dale Hendricks. Sharing an interest in native plants, natural landscaping and ecological restoration, the two focused their southeastern Pennsylvania company on the propagation of North American perennials, supplying these in plug form for landscape architects, finish growers and retail centers. Today, North Creek remains a major wholesaler of choice native perennials, with Steve still at the helm. He spoke with Scott Beuerlein about the increase in demand for native plants and ecologically sound garden design.
Q&A with Steve Castorani
Scott Beuerlein: Tell me a little about the formation of North Creek Nurseries.
Steve Castorani: While I was studying plant science and landscape design at the University of Delaware, I started a little landscaping business. This was around 1977. I would buy plants for landscaping projects and end up with extras, which I would grow on in my family’s back yard. I liked plant propagation, so I would do that at the end of the day. I wound up buying an old greenhouse, and suddenly I owned a nursery! From this back-yard nursery, I started Gateway Garden Center in 1985 with my wife, Peggy.
By 1986 I had purchased property in Landenberg, Pennsylvania. It was an old mushroom farm. I had met Dale Hendricks through one of my former University of Delaware professors, Dr. Dick Lighty. By this time, Dr. Lighty was the first director of Mt. Cuba Center (a Delaware botanic garden devoted to native plants). Dale suggested we start a nursery together. Dale had extensive growing experience and wanted to start out on his own.
Back then, no one was talking about ecology, native plants or plants that increase biodiversity. It was not part of anyone’s vocabulary. So, for North Creek Nursery, Dale and I focused on plants that provided ecosystem services, even though that was not a word either. We called it “plants for naturalistic landscaping.”
How North Creek Nurseries got started
We had one foot in regular garden plants and the other foot in the ecological market. So we started working with landscape architects as well. We began to see there was a movement toward doing landscape-restoration work, but people were having trouble finding the right plant material. So, we custom grew for them. We pioneered the native-plant world back then. It is where our catchphrase, “Where horticulture meets ecology,” came from.
By 1995, I was able to close my landscaping business and Peg could help out more with the garden center, so I could concentrate on working more with Dale at North Creek. We had a surprisingly good relationship, which lasted for more than 20 years. (Dale retired from the business in 2008.)
SB: Were you growing standard one-gallon perennials?
SC: No. We were always selling plugs, which are perennial starts generally meant for wholesalers or retailers to grow on into one gallon or larger plants for the consumer. Dale had experience with plugs, having formerly worked at Green Leaf, a wholesale propagator near Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Prior to the mid-1970s, the perennial palette was peonies, daylilies, astilbes, hostas, irises and some common groundcovers. There wasn’t variety because most had to be grown and sold bare root. The idea to grow perennials as plugs evolved from the annual flower business, where you sow seeds or stick cuttings in flats. Perennials grown this way could be put into larger containers and finished, the same way nurseries were doing with shrubs.
Growing perennials from plugs
SB: So plugs really opened up the range of perennials we grow?
SC: Yes. A lot of people didn’t know the possibilities until we and some of our peers started to grow different plants in plugs. It helped because we could then ship them easily to growers. Plus, in the early ’80s, the Perennial Plant Association was formed, and they started promoting diverse perennials to the public. Some of their early favorites were Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii ‘Goldsturm’ and Coreopsis verticillata ‘Moonbeam’.
Because Dale and I were interested in ecological plants, North Creek was growing plants that other people weren’t—like grasses and rudbeckia. But we weren’t exclusively growing natives. We included things like sedums. This was around the time that Wolfgang Oehme and James Van Sweden were creating new landscapes based on a German style of design. They developed what they called the New American Garden, which wasn’t a purely native garden, but it evoked natural landscapes. We had a relationship with them and with botanic gardens, arboreta and other landscape architects. The perennial market was growing rapidly, and we saw opportunities.
We also had opportunities to introduce new plants. Some were natives, and some were native selections. Some of those were ahead of their time in the market — we couldn’t sell them then, but some we can sell now.
Plant introductions from North Creek Nurseries
SB: What are some of North Creek’s introductions?
SC: We’ve introduced plants that became associated with North Creek, but through alliances with other people. For example, we worked with Dr. Lighty at Mt. Cuba to introduce the asters Symphyotrichum novae-angliae ‘Purple Dome’ and S. laeve var. laeve ‘Bluebird.’ Porteranthus trifoliatus ‘Pink Profusion’, and Iris versicolor ‘Purple Flame’ also came through Mt. Cuba in later years.
We introduced Chicago Botanic Garden’s hybrid Echinacea. We didn’t introduce Scabiosa ‘Butterfly Blue’, but we really scaled it up and sold it by the tens of thousands.
There’s Symphyotrichum cordifolium ‘Avondale’. Chelone lyonii ‘Hot Lips’ is our selection. Heuchera americana ‘Dale’s Strain’ was named for Dale by Allen Bush. We worked with David Culp on the Brandywine strain of hellebores. Geranium maculatum ‘Espresso’ was found here on the property by Dale. We brought Lonicera sempervirens ‘Major Wheeler’ to market through a relationship with the introducer.
Phlox paniculata ‘Jeana’ was given to us, but it became hidden in the garden here. It was just sleeping behind a panicum. We cut the panicum down and it was like, “Look at this plant!” We weren’t the introducer of the plant, but we popularized it.
Salvia ‘Caradonna’ we brought from Europe from its introducer there, Beate Zillmer. For Sisyrinchium ‘Lucerne’, we worked with Robert Herman, up in New England, who found it in Germany. Viola ‘Silver Gem’ came from Rick Lewandowski in Bibb County, Georgia. Vernonia lettermanii ‘Iron Butterfly’ came from Allan Armitage while he was still at the University of Georgia.
We have one patented plant, Schizachyrium scoparium ‘Standing Ovation’, a little bluestem grass.
Ecological landscaping and native plants
SB: Are native plants and ecological landscapes becoming more popular?
SC: With monarch butterfly habitat destruction, the drop in insect populations, the overspray that killed honeybees in Oregon years ago—somebody sprayed a linden tree in full bloom and killed thousands of bees—these all raised public awareness of environmental stress and degradation.
Around the late ’90s to early 2000s, we started seeing garden-center customers asking about plants to feed birds or for pollinators, and even asking for native plants. I call this solution-based plantings.
American Beauties Native Plants line from North Creek Nurseries
A lot of wholesale growers were producing plants that fit the criteria, but they weren’t promoting them as native or as that kind of solution. That’s how we came up with American Beauties Native Plants, North Creek’s retail line. They are native plants that can grow in typical tough garden situations. At the garden center, someone can ask even the teenager loading cars about native plants, and he can point to the green pots under the American Beauties sign and say, “They’re over there.” There’s literature with them, too, and on the website.
I’ve been all over the country talking with retailers. There is a movement afoot with more people asking for more sustainable plants, and plants with lower maintenance needs. Nature centers and public gardens are also contributing to this effort in creating the paradigm shift.
If you drive around most neighborhoods, though, there’s still a minority of people that have changed the way they landscape. It’s a slow, long process. I’m firmly committed to plants being a necessary part of life, but I know people have their own problems, and not everyone is going to garden. Not everyone is going to have that appreciation.
But even if they don’t, and their home landscape looks suspect, they might get out and walk in nature, even if it’s in a park somewhere. Then they can make the connection. But unfortunately, because of past landscape trends, they don’t know what a native plant is versus a non-native.
A movement towards sustainability
SB: Making gardening and landscapes less expensive could do a lot of good. Do you see plug-sized perennials, which are cost effective, becoming more widely available at retail?
SC: Yes. It’s not the easiest thing because of their shelf life and the need to mix them up on the shelves, because people don’t always need a 32- or 50-cell flat of something.
One of the problems with plugs, or even landscape quarts, is that they look great in spring, but by summer, any unsold plants are harder to maintain, or they need to be potted up. They effectively become waste for the garden center. Yes, we’re seeing more and more use of the Landscape Plug on big plantings, but for the retail market it’s going to take some innovation about how the plants get there and are promoted.
There are people who are buying our plugs in flats and mixing them. Some are being sold through Izel Plants. Pizzo Native Plant Nursery is doing this in the Chicago area. The National Wildlife Federation is working with nurseries to package plants in smaller sizes and in kits. There’s a lot going on if you start looking. We sell a lot of plants through Izel Plants to homeowners who might be doing a bigger project and want full flats.
All photos courtesy of North Creek Nurseries.
