COVER STORY
Member Spotlight on
The
SHRECKHISE NURSERIES
Shreckhise family has been growing trees and shrubs in the soil of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia for more than 130 years. Over four generations, they’ve learned that their native region produces plants hardy enough to survive and thrive across climate zones and in the most demanding applications, whether in suburban front yards or along busy city streets. Anne Little runs a non-profit organization dedicated to maintaining a vibrant urban forest in the Northern Virginia city of Fredericksburg. Over the last 15 years, her group, Tree Fredericksburg, has planted more than 8,000 trees in city parks, along streets, and other places around the historic city, achieving a 95% survival rate. Many of those trees were provided by Shreckhise Nurseries in Grottoes, a family-run grower that has served independent garden centers and landscapers since 1936. Since Little does root-planting to achieve high survival rates and healthy growth of urban trees, she needed a nursery willing to offer service above and beyond the usual. As a small, nimble grower committed to customer satisfaction, Shreckhise could help. “They’re fabulous people,” explains Little. “I work with about a dozen different nurseries and the difference is customer service.” Unlike some companies that Little has had to contact multiple times to confirm an order, Shreckhise is always proactive in communicating with her as the customer at every stage of a project. “When I have a question, if they don’t know the answer, they’ll get the information and then call me right back,” she adds. “Anne at Tree Fredericksburg asked us to pot their trees in a fabric container to help prevent root circling,” explains Matt Shreckhise, the fourth generation of the family to help run the business. “Once the trees established themselves in the container, we pulled the soil away from the trees’ root collar to prevent stressed adventitious roots. Both of these practices help the longterm health of the tree.” While few customers have the need for, and the budget to cover, such labor-intensive work by their nursery, Shreckhise was pleased to have a chance to flex its creative muscles on the Fredericksburg project. “Anne cares only about the roots. Their trees’ growth and survival rates are remarkable,” adds Matt.
14 • VNLA News • Fall 2021
Innovation is in the company’s DNA, built, perhaps surprisingly, on a foundation of tradition. Though the current company was founded in the 1930s, the family has been in the nursery business in the Shenandoah Valley since patriarch Noah Shreckhise started growing in the late 1880s. In that time, as the industry has changed, the company has changed with it. Anne Little in Fredericksburg credits much of her success to the flexibility, skill and commitment to high quality of Shreckhise Nurseries. So do other customers of the company including Rich Barfield of Area Landscaping in Fairfax, Virginia, who has done business with Matt’s father Danny Shreckhise for 42 years. Shreckhise has always offered “old fashioned customer service” and high-quality products. “They won’t ship marginal material. If something’s not ready, they won’t put it on a truck until it is. Their word means something,” says Barfield. Barfield has also seen the company introduce innovations, for example, shipping partial loads and smaller quantities, providing more finished product and changing their catalog in response to trends. “There’s a huge demand for native plants, and they’ve really stepped up,” says Barfield. Shreckhise grows about 14,000 deciduous container trees in 15-gallon containers each year. The company also grows a wide array of shrubs in 3-gallon and 7-gallon containers. They ship their plant material on their own trailers for delivery into the mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions. Chuck Captain, of Stadler Nurseries in the Maryland suburbs of Washington DC, appreciates that Shreckhise has their own trucks which gives them more flexibility about supplying what customers want, when they want it and in the quantities they need. “They offer a good garden center mix with a lot of red and yellow plants that pop,” Captain says. “I always joke with Danny that if I wanted to get into the nursery business, I’d buy them out. Not many companies are so organized and so clean.” Danny has been involved in agriculture his entire life. He grew up on a dairy farm, and along with running the nursery and a related landscaping business, his family also managed a beef herd and manufactured wooden chicken coops. When Danny and his generation took over the business in 1977, he focused it on nursery wholesaling and soon potted the first basket-grown trees. Today, nearly all plants at Shreckhise are grown in containers.
