LOOMIS CREEK NURSERY
29 Van Deusen Road, Hudson, NY 12534
(518) 851-9801
www.loomiscreek.com; e-mail info@loomiscreek.com
Bob Hyland and Andrew Beckman

Perennials for Zones 4-6. Tender perennials, annuals, tropicals, vines, and shrubs. Small specialty nursery. Open April through July 4th, daily, 9 to 5; July 5 through mid-October, Thursday through Sunday, 9 to 5. Call for precise dates. Catalog on Web site. Free plant list at nursery. No mail order. Custom plant orders. Integrated Pest Management. Seasonal containers. Expert advice. Landscape design. Display gardens. Visitors welcome.

Once in a while, a brand-new retail nursery excites everyone with its prospects for enlivening horticulture in an entire region. In 2003, Loomis Creek Nursery opened its doors: rolling metal gates, deer-proofed with 6-inch mesh, beside an 1820 farmhouse near Hudson.

Almost instantly, luxuriant borders and displays made Loomis Creek seem like a nursery veteran. A handsome wooden outbuilding rapidly emerged from a lumber pile. Stylish perennials gathered in a graveled sales yard in the company of tall ornamental grasses. Decorative tropicals made floral explosions beside a Gothic-style greenhouse. A red cypress vine twirled fetchingly around a granite post, just in time for a camera flash.

The proprietors of Loomis Creek Nursery are two of New York’s best-known horticultural insiders: Bob Hyland, former vice president of Horticulture and Operations at Brooklyn Botanical Garden, past president of Manhattan’s Metro Hort Group, and one-time associate of Pennsylvania’s Longwood Gardens and San Francisco’s Strybing Arboretum; and Andrew Beckman, a Longwood Gardens graduate, head gardener to Martha Stewart, Deputy Garden Editor at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and past gardener to Peter Wooster and Stephen Sondheim.

With such lustrous credentials, the only mystery is why two delightful, knowledgeable men are working their hands to the bone running a nursery. “Most of us have a pipe dream of starting a little nursery,” Hyland says. “The original passion is all about plants.”

Loomis Creek’s dazzling inventory focuses on garden-worthy perennials for Zones 4 to 6 and showy annuals and tender perennials for containers and borders. The nursery’s goal is to offer what it calls “underused, out-of-the-ordinary species and cultivars,” both native and exotic, for mixed borders, meadows, and containers. Choice flowering shrubs are being added to the inventory, along with more flowering vines and even more ornamental grasses.

Plant choices are designed to get the most out of every inch of leaf or flower. Applying their combined knowledge and experience, Hyland and Beckman almost invariably select the best-performing plants, with the nicest form, in the most gorgeous floral and foliage tones. Reviewing the plant list, one is impressed by their surety of judgment, tempting the ordinary gardener to bypass self-doubt and turn the whole matter over to experts. Garden design services are available on a limited basis. “We tend to be generalists,” says Hyland, as if this were easy. “It’s about growing good plants and combining textures and colors in innovative ways.”

The nursery’s main absorption is with what are described as “bold architectural perennials and ornamental grasses”—plants that add drama, color, and structure to the garden. A good example can be seen in a Gertrude Jekyll-inspired border combining burgundy fountain grass, bronze-leaved tobacco, variegated pink dianthus, and striped yucca. To realize similarly rich effects in other gardens, Loomis Creek offers giant angelicas, big-flowered hibiscuses, perennial red-hot pokers, and striped grasses with exotic plumage. Essential to making the party work are attractive fillers such as small-flowered clematis vines, white baptisia, and Kalimeris integrifolia, a frothy little Mongolian daisy that stands up well to drought and heat.

Loomis Creek also likes to pair colorful textured foliage with jungle plants. This lush style is readily identified in a tropical border inspired by Brazilian designer Roberto Burle Marx, where red castor beans and incandescent cannas pose against a cool backdrop of sky-blue Salvia uliginosa. Such theatrical statements are not just displays—Loomis Creek has the inventory to back them up: velvet amaranths, creamy angel’s-trumpets, paint-splashed coleus, caladiums smeared silver and rose, and fancy-leaf pelargoniums in irrepressible hues. Felts, filigrees, and watered silk effects give such foliage the glamour of haute couture.

With an almost civic consciousness, Loomis Creek promotes plants deserving greater attention from gardeners. Fine shade plants, for example, include maple-leaved Kirengeshoma palmata, silver-leaved Korean violet, golden ligularia, and one or two glorious Japanese iris. Biennials of the cottage garden, such as foxgloves and hollyhocks, are another interest. Late summer and fall-blooming plants extend the season—improved coneflowers, huge joe-pye weeds, wildish asters, a goldenrod called ‘Fireworks’, and a tall, somewhat unruly group of verbascums.

The proprietors are “avid plantsmen” committed to making their nursery a plant-lover’s destination and inspiring source of horticultural knowledge. Plant list and gardens are likely to change each year, reflecting unusual finds, improved selections, and the irrepressible creative energy of the owners. Plant photos on the Web site provide a welcome preview of their intentions.

All nursery stock is beautifully grown and reasonably priced, especially considering its provenance. Perennials generally come in deep quart and gallon containers, grasses and tropicals in 2-gallon pots, and annuals in 8-cell packs and 3 1/4-inch pots. Plants are grown from cutting and plugs, with more on-site propagation likely as the nursery matures. Because each cultivar is grown in smaller quantities, some things sell out and selection shifts during the season. Larger quantities or unlisted plants can readily be custom ordered.

Starting a nursery is challenging and exhilarating. Rain and drought bedevil the sophisticated horticulturist just as sorely as his hay-baling forebears. But Hyland and Beckman are game, their nursery is already amazing, and they appear to be having fun. “We have great plans and vision,” Hyland says. “Hopefully, the economy and Mother Nature will cooperate.”

Directions: Loomis Creek is near Hudson, 2 hours north of Manhattan; 35 miles from Albany; 25 miles from Great Barrington, Massachusetts; and 40–45 miles from Falls Village, Connecticut. From I-87, take exit 21 and turn left onto Route 23 east. Cross the Hudson River on the toll bridge. In 5.6 miles, at the 2nd traffic light, turn left onto Route 23/9H north. In 3.9 miles, at a traffic light, turn left onto Route 23B west. In 0.5 mile, turn left onto Stone Mill Road. In 1 mile, turn right on Van Deusen Road; the nursery is on the left. From the Taconic State Parkway, exit onto Route 23 (Hillsdale/Claverack) and turn west on Route 23. In 5.5 miles, pass through the first traffic light in Claverack where Route 23 changes to 23B. In 0.5 mile, turn left onto Stone Mill Road. In 1 mile, turn right on Van Deusen Road; the nursery is on the left.

Nearby attractions: The area is full of amusements justifying a prolonged visit. Loomis Creek’s Web site lists area accommodations; see also www.agmkt.state.ny.us (fresh local produce stands) and www.hudsonvalley.org (regional information). Customers can rent Loomis Creek's cute 1-bedroom guest cottage (518-851-9731) for short periods; it comes with an in-ground swimming pool and charming garden. Hudson is a hip town with good antiques stores and cafés, including Swoon Kitchenbar, 340 Warren Street (518-822-8938; www.swoonkitchenbar.com), a Manhattan-quality bistro with Hudson prices. The Secret Gardener, 250 Warren Street, Hudson (518-822-0992), sells containers and cut flowers. Dia:Beacon, 3 Beekman Street, Beacon (845-440-0100; www.diaart.org), is a major contemporary art museum in a renovated Nabisco plant; note the crabapple and hawthorn orchard in the parking lot, designed by Robert Irwin. Down a mile-long avenue of black locust trees, Montgomery Place, Route 9G, Annandale on Hudson (914-758-5461), is an unspoiled 434-acre estate on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River; a horticultural showplace since the 1930s, its lovely gardens are meticulously maintained (open daily except Tuesdays, April through October; picnicking allowed).

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