The roots of White’s Old Mill run deep in Chesapeake.
And while the wholesale operations at White’s Nursery are winding down, co-owner Tal White wants the community to know White’s Old Mill Garden Center will remain open in Deep Creek. The garden center includes e-commerce shipping and less than an acre of greenhouses.
“We want to do what’s best for our employees, community, lender and vendors … who have been part of our growth, our history and legacy,” he said.
Last year was the most challenging operating year for the wholesale greenhouse, which White said is both capital- and labor-intensive. Reduced customer demand and rising interest rates affected the viability of the wholesale nursery, he said.
The business’s future is still unfolding as it gets the remaining plants to market and determines the next step for the nursery – either selling the approximately 56.1-acre property with 20 acres of climate-controlled commercial greenhouses for future development or finding an investor for the wholesale side.
Commercial real estate firm Colliers lists 63 acres of the White’s property, including where several of the family’s homes sit, for sale for $13.5 million. The online listing markets the site for residential or mixed-use development and says “nursery business can remain if desired.”
The sale is to take care of all the stakeholders involved in the business, White said.
“It’s a much smaller footprint for being able to supply the retail garden center,” he said. “It’s like we’re going back to 1974 for the amount of space that we need to use.”
But, selfishly, White said they just want to keep growing plants. The business grows 90 genera and 1,000 varieties of plants from season to season. The wholesale operation shipped between 4 million and 6 million plants annually to the Northeast and Southeast, he said.
“It’s a lifestyle,” he said. “My grandfather and father always told me that growing plants in the ground or greenhouse is a lifestyle — just as farming is for farmers.”
White and his sister, Dana Doyle, made White’s their livelihood after graduating from college — minus a 12-year stint for him when he worked as a meteorologist.
White recalls running around barefoot, sticking plants in the ground and throwing soil up in the air as a child growing up on the family property initially owned by his late grandfather, Willis White.
Tal White’s father, Norm White, was born in one of the original homes on the property. The patriarch turns 91 in April and still works seven days a week as owner of the family business that he and his late wife, Hetty, started in 1956.
His parents operated a store out of hobby greenhouses, but Tal White said they realized they needed a separate space because people kept knocking on their back door asking if they had flowers for sale. They built the freestanding garden center on Weiss Lane in 1985.
The store is a place where consumers, plant lovers and gardeners can find niche items typically not found in big-box stores.
It’s not uncommon to see the elder White scurrying about the grounds on a golf cart accompanied by Snow, a Samoyed dog.
As the family reorganizes the business and moves away from large-scale growing to take more active roles in the garden center, White said they will be going back to their roots and sharing their love for gardening with the community.
It’s the same community the White family has called home for close to a century.
Sandra J. Pennecke, 757-652-5836, sandra.pennecke@pilotonline.com
