One of Connecticut’s only native plant nurseries just can’t stop growing

Randall Fleming is the go-to guy at UrbanScapes Native Plant Nursery, according to Dennis Riordan, who helped found the New Haven-based nursery through Menunkatuck Audubon Society. “Randall lives in the neighborhood and has been with us since we started during the pandemic in 2020. I call him rNaturalist, like iNaturalist, because he can look at a plant and tell you what it is.”

Randall has risen to become a crew leader at UrbanScapes, doing everything from watering to helping customers and bringing plants out to their cars.

“My favorite is when we have a big sale and everyone’s asking for my help,” says Randall. “I ask them what kind of soil they have, how much shade or sun they get, what color flower they like… and then I make recommendations. I had to learn the Latin names of the plants, but that wasn’t very fun!”

UrbanScapes cultivated 4,500 plants this year, up from about 300-400 in 2020 when they launched. They have employed 12 young people in seasonal, hourly paid work, four of whom started freshman year of high school and just graduated.

“We couldn’t do it without our crew,” says Dennis. “I’m so proud of the guys we have working for us. Of the four who just graduated, one went into the Navy, one is at Central Connecticut State University, and one is starting college in January. It’s bittersweet. When we break up after work they go around and hug everybody goodbye!”

It isn’t just the crew that has tended to stick around – UrbanScapes’ customer base has grown significantly, with many turning into repeat purchasers.

Nicole Davis, Watersheds Project Manager for Save the Sound, frequents the nursery for work.

“Save the Sound built one of the largest rain gardens in the northeast at Hamden Town Center Park, and we probably bought close to 1,500 plants over the course of the season,” says Nicole. “At the end of the year we amazingly had money left in our grant, so I did one of my favorite things which is… buying extra plants!”

Jim Sirch is the current President of the Connecticut Horticultural Society, and past president of Hamden Land Conservation Trust (HLCT). He has purchased plants through UrbanScapes for HLCT and for his own home garden, where he is decreasing his lawn and ensuring 70% of his plantings are native (per the 70/30 planting rule attributed to Doug Tallamy).

“Hamden Land Conservation Trust has a four-acre property along the Farmington Canal, where there is a meadow heavily invaded with mugwort. We’ve smothered it with about a foot of woodchips and planted some native herbaceous plants and shrubs like red osier dogwood, spicebush, sneezeweed or helen’s flower, swamp milkweed… UrbanScapes is the closest native plant nursery in the state,” said Jim.

This lack of native plant nurseries in Connecticut was a pain point Dennis Riordan recognized early on. It was a major impetus for establishing UrbanScapes and creates an opportunity for growth.

Originally, UrbanScapes was growing plants from native plugs, purchased from commercial nurseries in New Jersey. This year they purchased plugs from Judge’s Farm in Old Lyme, a 350-year-old family farm that recently made the switch to growing native plants.

The next step is growing plants from seed, both so that UrbanScapes can produce more plants and so their workers can learn new skills. While they have a greenhouse, it is not heated and therefore not usable in the colder months. Finding a heated greenhouse is one of Dennis’s top priorities.

Ultimately, Dennis would like to see UrbanScapes become a thriving business that benefits the community. This could happen through the Menunkatuck Audubon Society, or it could involve passing on the nursery to a local community organization that would be able to invest in its growth.

“I once said to Q (Quayson Pearson, one of the UrbanScapes staff), could you take care of this Japanese knotweed? I thought he’d just cut it back a bit. Next thing I know, he’s going over to the nursery during the week when he’s not scheduled to cut knotweed,” says Dennis, reflecting on what makes UrbanScapes so special to the community.

“Getting all these native plants out in the world is good but the best part is the people who work there,” he says.