Connecticut

• Comstock Ferre & Co.

• Sam Bridge Nursery & Greenhouses

COMSTOCK, FERRE & Co.
263 Main Street, Old Wethersfield, CT 06109
(800) 733-3773 and (860) 571-6590; fax (860) 571-6595
Pierre Bennerup

Garden seed. Perennials and alpine plants. Retail seed store and perennial plant nursery. Seed store open daily, Monday to Friday 11-5. Wednesday 11-6. Saturday 10-5. Outside sales April through November. Free seed catalog. Perennial plant list $3. Mail order for seed only. E-mail: comstock@tiac.net. Web site: www.aac.net/users/comstock/.

Founded in 1820, Comstock, Ferre & Co. is the oldest seed house in New England, still housed in 19th-century seed barns in historic Old Wethersfield. These creaking wooden barns still display weathered ads for Garden Seeds in faded red paint. Inside, visitors encounter the old-fashioned scent and clutter of a dry goods store. A series of interconnected shops purvey seeds, dried herbs, watering cans, terra-cotta pots, and garden gifts. The seed store sells Comstock, Ferre seed in packets and bulk (also available through the company’s mail-order catalog and Web site). Original ornamental borders printed on the seed packets, the innovation of an early owner, are in use to this day.

Although Comstock, Ferre seed is no longer grown on Connecticut farmland, reliable standards are maintained. All seed is tested to meet or exceed USDA germination requirements and almost all is untreated by fungicides or chemicals. The seed list is extensive, and Includes old and new varieties of garden vegetables, salad greens, herbs, vines, and annual and perennial flowers. The vegetables include open-pollinated yellow corn and an antique German vegetable called Hamburg parsley, grown for its edible root. We counted 50 kinds of herb seed, including assorted lavenders, basils, thymes, and hard-to-find cardoon, horehound, sweet woodruff, and watercress. Flower seeds emphasize old cottage-garden varieties such as corn cockle, wallflower, and forget-me-not, and new varieties such as vanilla marigold and columnar mallow. Grass seed, wildflower mixes, garlic and onion sets, and a rich odorless fertilizer made of worm castings are also available.

By a stroke of good fortune, Comstock, Ferre was purchased in 1991 by master plantsman Pierre Bennerup, a well-known bon vivant who is one of the region’s foremost nurserymen. Bennerup owns Sunny Border Nursery, a noted wholesale grower in Kensington, Connecticut, and travels internationally collecting new and unusual garden perennials. Some are sold under the Sunny Border Gold label at discriminating nurseries, but a larger number are now being retailed through Comstock, Ferre in Old Wethersfield.

Some 40 plant display tables are located outside the seed barns: open seasonally, they display a diverse selection of garden perennials and a strong collection of unusual alpine plants. On our visit we saw rare primroses, distinctive violets, enchanting saxifrages and pearlworts, and several Rocky Mountain natives. Each year, new Sunny Border introductions—its dwarf purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea ‘Kim’s Knee High’), for example—add pizzazz to the collection. All plants are well labeled and healthy. Unlike the seeds, potted perennials are not available by mail order.

The surrounding town of Old Wethersfield, Connecticut’s “most ancient town” (founded in 1634), has a remarkable legacy of 17th- and 18th-century houses flanking its broad, tree-lined streets. These and the creaky seed barns give a trip to Comstock, Ferre the delightfully spooky quality of a visit to a vanished township, a Connecticut version of Brigadoon.

Directions: Old Wethersfield is south of Hartford. From 1-91, take exit 26 and follow signs into Old Wethersfield. Comstock, Ferre is on Main Street, across from the brick church with the white steeple.

Nearby attractions: Old Wethersfield retains a picturesque collection of historic houses. some operating as museums. Avoid Wethersfield Weekend in mid-May if you do not wish to be caught in a historic battle reenactment. Since 1892, the Chas. C. Hart Seed Co., 304 Main Street. Old Wethersfield (800-326-HART), has been a dependable source of short-season flower and vegetable seeds, sold by mail order in distinctive packets using the original red-heart logo (Plant HART’S Seeds); a small store is sited in the Wethersfield headquarters. Cledhill Nursery, 660 Mountain Road, West Hartford, CT 06117 (860-233-5692), founded in 1922, is a fantasy garden center set on a small private estate traversed by a kid-size garden railway and diminutive millrace, complete with bridge and small functional windmill. Elizabeth Park, Prospect and Asylum Avenues, Hartford (860-242-001 7), is the country’s oldest municipal rose garden, growing 15,000 rosebushes, some nearly a century old; open daily from dawn to dusk.  

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SAM BRIDGE NURSERY & GREENHOUSES
437 North Street, Greenwich, CT 06830
203-869-3418
Samuel E Bridge III

Perennials Ornamental nursery stock.  Retail nursery and greenhouse. Open daily. Monday to Saturday 8:30-5. Free Perennial Guide catalog. No mail order.

Located in Greenwich on an elegant road lined with mansions, Sam Bridge Nursery & Greenhouses has been a stable source of superior garden plants for two generations. Established in 1930 by owner Samuel Bridge’s parents, the nursery occupies 20 acres of wooded bottomland between the town cemetery and church. In spring, its entry drive is marked by a profusion of daffodils lining the public road.

The distinguishing features of Sam Bridge Nursery are its superior cultivation practices and eye for quality. Most of the nursery’s plant stock is still propagated in greenhouses on-site. This being Greenwich, one expects to pay for the pleasure, but price is not the gardener’s sole criterion. Sam Bridge is a good place to reflect on garden plants as investments: on how long we live with our purchases, and how much pleasure we get from a fine, well-chosen plant.

Sam Bridge Nursery specializes in ornamental perennials grown and displayed in open hoop houses next to the parking lot. A perennial catalog, obtainable at the nursery, lists over 1, 000 perennials (more are available); plant descriptions are supplemented by attractive photographs. These plants are a classy lot, stylish without being faddish. On a spring visit we found nearly 20 varieties of columbine, a white perennial gloxinia. a new loosestrife with pink-variegated foliage, and superior astilbes ranging from rock-garden dwarfs to a 3-foot Ostrich Plume’. Sam Bridge perennials are vigorous, and their labels give a full account of their names and horticultural needs. Gardeners must come to Greenwich to buy them, for there is no mail order.

Beside perennials, Sam Bridge Nursery sells huge technicolor pansies, attractive hanging baskets, and pots of bulbs forced in Its greenhouses. One whole greenhouse is filled with gorgeous patio plants that the nursery has trained as topiary standards—tree-form geranium, heliotrope, mallow, solanum, and sweet potato vine. Early birds can also find little-leaf lilac standards and dwarf Norway spruce brought in from the West Coast. Outside, from spring to fall, a sizable selection of decorative trees and shrubs is set out under an atmospheric grove of pine trees. These include choice weeping trees, dwarf and unusual conifers, corkscrews, and espaliers. None of the trees and shrubs is grown locally, but on our visit they were all healthy and carefully tended, with root balls well buried In mulch, The staff are active and friendly, and if they do not know an answer they will get it for you.

Directions: From Route 15/Merritt Parkway, take exit 31, bear right onto North Street, and proceed south for 2 miles to the entry drive on the right. If you reach the cemetery you have gone too far.

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