Growing passion

Winkelmolen Nursery was founded in the spring of 1979. The nursery started on 15 acres with 10,000 seedlings. The farm was purchased the previous summer and most of 1978 was spent cleaning up old greenhouses. Within four years, the farm was filled to capacity.

In 1984, the Anderson farm was rented (ten additional acres), but within two years, that farm was filled as well. Fortunately, the farm next door came up for sale. It was purchased in 1986. In 1990, the Troy farm was added. It consisted of 75 acres of clay loam. Over the next 14 years a few more farms were purchased for a total of 600 acres.

Our first cold storage was built in 1988. It has a capacity of 5,000 square feet. Our office with additional cold storage was built in 1992; it has two loading docks for tractor trailers and two direct access doors for smaller trucks. We have added several buildings over the years and with our newest cold storage, it will bring the total capacity to approximately 85,000 square feet. Along with the extra storage the loading dock capacity has increased to 11 cold docks for bareroot material. 3 outdoor loading docks were recently added for containers and baskets.

In 2016 we built a gutter connected greenhouse to be used for propagation. During the past ten years, we have also steadily expanded the number of polyhouses that are mainly used for growing seedlings and to provide winter protection for trees.

We started growing some of our own seedlings in the 1980s; the seeds are collected locally by our certified seed collector or purchased from Ontario seed sources whenever possible. We are located in seedzone 37 and also collect from zones 32 and 33. We grow a wide variety of native trees from these collected seeds. Seedlings are transplanted into the field for one or two summers and then either left to grow on or budded and grafted. We also grow a large selection of different top grafted varieties, ranging from weeping peashrub to weeping elm.

Even though we started out mainly as a bare-root grower, we have expanded into container trees. We grow native trees in 2, 3 and 5 gallon pots for naturalizing, but also put an extensive selection of our quality bare root trees in a 5, 7, 10, 12 or 16 gallon containers. We hold them for one season to allow them to root and they are ready to ship the next season. These trees will arrive at your garden center or jobsite ready to sell or plant.

We are continuing to grow as a family nursery with the addition of Jan and Ans’s sons Nick and Jeff over the last 5 years. With the addition of the second generation, we will continue to produce high quality product for many years to come.