At Holdridge's, It's That Time of Year Again

Robins are pecking at the front yard, sprouts are showing, and there is the sound of baseball hitting bat. This is the time of year when the adrenaline starts pumping for Shari Holdridge Hewes, owner of Holdridge’s Home and Garden Showplace in Ledyard Center.

Hewes loves the signs of spring, but she also knows this is a crucial time in her line of work: About half the business’s revenue is counted between the start of March and the end of June, with April and May the busiest months.

This is, in a sense, the nursery’s holiday shopping season. “By the end of May, I pretty much know what kind of year it’s going to be,” said Hewes, the fourth generation of Holdridges to operate the business.

And it is a time  when a lot of product is arriving at the store, from fertilizer, to birdseed, to grass seed, to propane tanks, and on and on. 

“We use 400 palettes and each palette carries a ton,” said Craig Nelson, buyer for Holdridge’s. “So we’re dealing with about 400 tons of material.”

Or, put another way, “We go through a lot of stuff.”

Some materials have been ordered as long ago as last July and August. Already, the outside has been stocked with flowering trees, shade trees, flowering shrubs, evergreens, azaleas, rhododendrons and the like. It will be May – when the threat of a killing frost has passed – before flowers are placed outside. In the meantime, they’re kept inside the greenhouse.

Holdridge’s raises about 60 percent of its own stock. It purchases the rest, with some flowers coming from as far away as Florida.

A rhythm to the months

There is almost a rhythm, with each month and each season having its own special beat.

In March, there is a lot of unloading, with stock coming in, and it is displayed both inside and outside the store. In April, there is a lot of selling, with the emphasis on trees, shrubs, vegetable plants and flowering plants.

In May, much of the time is spent outside, selling flowers and tropical plants, according to Holdridge’s Wayne Henson. In June, the selling continues along with watering (the weather is turning hot), plant maintenance and fertilizing.

“By the Fourth of July everybody seems to be in vacation mode, and things slow down,” Henson said. “Hopefully, we’ve sold most of the smaller plants, which are difficult to maintain.”

As for the rest of the year, there is preparing for the fall season, with pumpkins and colorful corn stock, and there is the Christmas season, with an emphasis on gifts and other signs of the holiday. Flowering plants remain available inside the greenhouse.

Now, in the busiest of the seasons, much depends on getting consumers in a spring frame of mind. It didn’t help that a chilling Northeaster hit on April Fools Day. Also, Hewes said, Easter Sunday gets many to start concentrating on lawn care, flowers, and landscaping. She lamented that Easter comes late this year, on April 24. 

Nearing century mark

Holdridge’s is about to hit a milestone. Next year will mark the business’s 100^th anniversary.  Several special events will take place, celebrating the moment. Samuel T. Holdridge started the business in 1912 on Geer Hill. It moved to its current location in the early 1960s. Shari Hewes succeeded her father, Bud Holdridge, in heading the operation.

One thing that has changed is that the business has pulled back. It had operated at sites in East Lyme, Norwich, Columbia and the Crystal Mall. Now all that is left is the home base in Ledyard.

“We found out that bigger isn’t always better,” Hewes said. “When you’re spread out there are problems that are more difficult to control.”

Unchanged is the Holdridge tradition of being a good community citizen, contributing in many ways to the Ledyard Fair and the Ledyard Congressional Church, among others.

“The feel of it all is still being family and community oriented,” she said. “That hasn’t changed. We’ve always been deeply engaged in the town.”