Peterson’s Nursery

I love going to this sprawling, family-​run nursery – the last small-​family nursery left in Princeton after Obal’s closed last year. Peterson’s has a wide variety of healthy house plants, organic potting soils, and pots. Garden soil, mulch, and gravels are available. Also, they have an impressive water garden with fish and frogs that I could spend an hour in, it’s so peaceful. In summer, they usually have some local peaches and blueberries on hand as well. Slates for walkways, trees. Baskets. Bird-​feeding items. Their annual July 4 sale is a good time to go, as more expensive items such as trees are half off (including installation).
It’s a good place to get healthy hanging flower baskets that will last all summer. And, they always have gorgeous red caladiums in spring.
Sometimes in summer, I go out of my way just to stop in and check out the latest doings. This place has good mojo.

There are so many garden centers/​nurseries in the area and after going to a few and being disappointed I was happy to end up at peterson’s. I had to buy centerpieces for an event at my company a few days before the event and Peterson’s had a great selection and more than enough of each flower that there were many options I could choose from. After I chose my flowers they wrapped the pot in gold foul to match the décor and the looked great. The staff was very friendly and helpful as well. I will definitely go back in the future.

As I wandered the grounds of the nursery, I began to wonder if I was actually in a park. They’ve got around 8 acres, and much of it is wooded, so that their trees are being kept in a natural environment. I was looking for an Amelanchier and Cornus Mas, and every other place in the area I had tried came up blank. A couple of places didn’t even seem to know what I was talking about, but Peterson’s had a selection of good specimens. The people working the place were very helpful as well. It looked like they had a good selection of native plants too, so I’ll likely be heading back there in the near future.
Here’s an important tip for when you’re at a garden center you’ve never visited before: If it’s cold outside and it’s going to be cold in the evening too, if they’ve got summer vegetables and plants outside on tables, then you should turn around and run away. If they’ve got them inside, and they don’t warn you not to plant them until it warms a little, then drop the plants and run away.
I was glad to see that Peterson’s wasn’t one of these joints that had tomato plants out for sale when the temperature would be dropping into the 30’s that night, and frost was a possibility. I’m thinking that they understand that a satisfied customer is a return customer, and customers rely on garden centers to have a clue as to what they’re doing.