GARDENSCAPES
Donaroma Grows
Planting is Always at the Heart of the Business
By Amelia Smith
Driving along the Vineyard Haven – Edgartown Road last year, some Islanders were surprised by the sudden clearing of the woods across from Norton Farm. That spot is now home to Jordan’s Farm where greenhouses have sprung up to grow a dazzling variety of landscape shrubs, tropical plants, potted flowers, vegetable seedlings, and Gislaine Donaroma much more. Jordan’s Farm is the latest and largest part of the growing arm of Donaroma’s Nursery, Landscaping, & Floral Design business, along with four other farm and greenhouse areas in Edgartown.
Jordan’s Farm is the latest and largest part of the growing arm of Donaroma’s Nursery, Landscaping, & Floral Design business, along with four other farm and greenhouse areas in Edgartown.
Mike Donaroma started his business in 1971, when there were a total of four landscapers working on the entire Island of Martha’s Vineyard. He earned a degree in Agronomy from the University of Massachusetts at Stockbridge and took graduate courses at Harvard University and Radcliffe. He’s been growing the business – and plants – ever since those early days. The retail nursery opened in 1977, and the landscaping business grew with ever-expanding demand. His family was part of it all – his son Jeff and daughter-in-law Gislaine lead much of the business now.
“I’m Mike Donaroma, and I have a plant problem,” he says by way of introduction. “The company grew a lot, but Mike is still here seeding and starting most of our plants by hand, himself,” Gislaine says. With over 26,000 unique items in the Donaroma’s sales system and up to 140 employees in the busiest part of the year, there’s a lot of managerial work to do, but the plants are always at the heart of the business. Mike will come in after hours, to tend the plants when the management work of the day is done, even at night. He leads by example, with no plans to fully retire. “I’m blessed with a lot of workaholics,” he says of the crew. “We’ll all end up in the compost pile some day.”
The property is leased from the Nortons who have farmed the land across the road since the late 1960s, land that has been in the Norton family since 1837. The site of Jordan’s Farm had been left as woodland and was in danger of losing its status as agricultural land. The lease to Donaroma’s preserves its agricultural mission, and has allowed the Donaromas to branch out into starting vegetables for the Norton Farm, the Donaroma’s retail store, and for other farms. It has also made room for a lot of innovation in the operation. The business has over thirty greenhouses, half of them at Jordan’s Farm. In the greenhouse furthest from the road, Mike shows off a new mechanized system for starting and potting plants, then delivering them to the appropriate hoop house or greenhouse.
A soil-mixing machine churns compost, peat, and more into combinations suited for particular plants, then helps fill pots, level them off, and moves them over to the next stage of the process. On the other side of the greenhouse, a vacuum-driven machine disperses tiny seeds into perfectly spaced divots, then reverses them into their starter trays, exactly centered in their spots. The planted starter trays go onto racks that ride onto an overhead rail trolley system which carries them behind the greenhouses to wherever they need to go to, and allows them to be moved easily from one house to the next as they’re moved into bigger containers, hardened off, or as the weather changes. Automated climate control systems keep the growing environment stable.
Everything grown at Jordan’s farm is in pots, Mike says, with virtually no runoff into the ground. The end purpose of all of the automation is to allow the Donaromas to grow more plants, and more varieties, whether those are hanging pots filled with cherry tomato plants, jiló (Brazilian eggplant) grown from Jamie Norton’s seeds from across the road, ornamental grasses, shrubs for landscaping, including tropical plants for growing indoors.
For more information visit donaromas.com, Main Office: 508.627.3036, Floral & Nursery: 508.627.8366 See them on Facebook & Instagram