TALMAGE FARM AGWAY
1122 Osborne Avenue, Riverhead, NY 11901
(631) 727-0124; fax (631) 727-0326
www.talmagefarmagway.com; e-mail agway@talmagefarm.com
The Talmage family

Perennials, annuals, trees, shrubs, roses, herbs, aquatics, and vegetables. Family-run garden center. Open year-round, Monday through Friday, 8 to 6; Saturday, 8 to 5; Sunday, 9 to 5. Shorter hours in winter. No catalog or mail order. Custom plant orders. Organic garden products. Animal feed. Workshops and seminars. Seasonal events. Visitors welcome.

Counted among Long Island’s earliest settlers, the Talmages arrived in 1650 and have been farmers ever since. In 1850, a branch of the family bought a large farm in Riverhead’s Baiting Hollow and used it to grow potatoes until 1963. Today, the farm comprises a 300-acre golf course, an 80-acre sod farm, and a 50-acre wholesale nursery that makes more money than the whole farm ever did in potatoes. In 2001, Talmage Farm bought the former Agway store in Riverhead as a retail outlet for its garden plants.

The Agway is a perfect fit. Henry Talmage, a 6th-generation farmer and former president of the Long Island Farm Bureau, oversees Talmage Farm’s vast high-tech greenhouse operation. Its current wholesale output of disease-free geraniums is about 25 million plants a year. His sister, Ellen Talmage, a Cornell University-trained horticulturist influential in many professional organizations, spearheaded Talmage Farm Perennials on family land 15 years ago. She started with a small shed and a sign that read “Horticultural Goddess,” for fun occasionally donning a toga and farm boots. The perennial farm now grows 850 varieties, including worthy native plants derived from Long Island genotypes that have been used in public reclamation projects. The Riverhead Agway is just down the street—close enough for plants to be delivered directly by tractor from Talmage Farm fields and greenhouses up the road.

Talmage Farm Agway is a 70-acre retail garden center with a large store (once a potato barn), an even larger nursery yard, and a warehouse. Unlike most Agways, it has unusually good garden plants, most of which come straight from Talmage Farm. Its strong suit is gallon-size perennials and native plants at great prices—fresh healthy stock that’ll survive well in local gardens. A full complement of popular flowering perennials is ever in stock. And because they’re so rare in the nursery trade, common native Long Island plants seem quite special: salt hay, American beach grass, white wood aster, seaside goldenrod, and naturalized beach wormwood. These natives can be ornamental, too—variegated cordgrass, double and white forms of marsh marigold, and a butter-yellow form of columbine. Even the cultivated shrub roses look a little brassy beside Virginia rose, found wild along Long Island’s coastal dunes. One of the nicest amenities is that if a plant isn’t in the store, they’ll bring it down for you from the farm.

Talmage Farm Agway stocks herbs, vegetables, woody plants, and seasonal greenhouse plants. New Guinea impatiens and 100 varieties of geraniums come from Talmage Farm’s greenhouses. The Agway is an excellent source for organic fertilizers and natural garden supplies. It’s a real Agway, too, with 15,000 SKUs attached to such store items as animal feed, pet supplies, propane, and super-turf builder. Seasonal events tend to focus on animals, such as the “Equine Event” (horse weekend) and Pet Santa day when people bring their pets to visit Santa Claus. A chicken and a horse once showed up in Santa outfits.

Some time when you’re here, take the short ride down Osborne Avenue to Talmage Farm—broad flat fields, good soil, a cluster of family houses, and the 4-acre greenhouse operation at the corner of Sound Avenue. It’s an attractive but unsentimental working landscape, at once ancient and modern. It represents the way Long Island families plan to keep their agricultural land intact for six more generations. The little public library at Baiting Hollow, with its Indian arrowheads and books by Ellen Talmage on kids’ horticulture, is open on Thursday and Saturday.

Directions: From New York City, take the Long Island Expressway (Route 495) to Riverhead, take exit 73 and turn west off the ramp onto Route 58. In 2 miles, turn sharp left onto Osborne Avenue; the Agway is on the right. From Riverhead, take West Main Street (Route 25) east past the Tanger Outlet Center. At the 4th light, turn right onto Route 58 and left onto Osborne Avenue; the Agway is on the right

Nearby attractions: Briermere Farms, 4414 Sound Avenue, Riverhead, NY (631-722-3931), is a roadside apple stand where Ellen Talmage sent us for homemade pie. The Riverhead Grill, 85 East Main Street, Riverhead (631-727-8495; open 8 to 8, Sunday, 8 to noon), is a 1932 Kullman diner serving comfort food. Star Confectionery, 4 East Main Street, Riverhead (631-727-9873), is where everybody goes for chocolate and egg creams. Warner’s Nursery, Garden Shop, Florist & Landscapes, 2669 Sound Avenue, Baiting Hollow, Riverhead, NY 11933 (631-727-8733), is an attractive 7-acre garden center stocked with fresh-dug trees from the family’s former potato-chip farm. Hallockville Museum Farm & Folklife Center, 6038 Sound Avenue, Riverhead (631-298-5292), is a living history museum showing a typical North Fork farm from 1880 to 1910.

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