Q&A with Mike Fitzgerald

Photo courtesy of Mike fitzgerald

NM: How did you get started in horticulture?

MF: Oh boy, I started out riding around in a car seat with my granddad while he was out tagging trees. So, I just fell in love with the industry early on and never really thought about doing anything else.

My grandad formally started this company in 1964. Prior to that, he worked in the Christmas tree business and collected wild plants, such as rhododendron and mountain laurel. They actually started off collecting the wild plants with a mule. They would dig them and drag them out of the woods using that mule and a car hood; stacked plants on that car hood and would slide them out. … It just grew from there. He bought some land, planted it; kept growing and growing.

I always worked here through high school. I started out learning how to prune trees, sheer and shape. Then I learned how to run equipment like tractors, loaders and skid steers. When I got out of high school, I went straight into work. Our other grower, Phil, was with Princeton Nursery for quite a while, and he mentored me. In lieu of going to college, I just spent a lot of time with him.

[The nursery] started out [with] just field grown B&B material. Then Phil and I built our liner division which is 1-gallon through 10-gallon container liners and some field grown bare root stuff. … That's sort of where I've ended up focusing on, the liner portion of [the business].

NM: What do you do at Fitzgerald Nursery?

MF: I do a little bit of everything. Ninety percent of my time is spent with the liner division. I manage the team there, check water and check the plants. I make sure our spray program and fertilizer programs are where they need to be. I train new employees to prune trees and run equipment. Then I also handle the sales portion of the liner division.

We started trying to grow our own liners right after the 2008 recession. We were getting probably 10 to 15 tractor-trailer loads of liners from the West Coast every year, and freight was just so expensive at the time. We kind of eased into it by growing things that were a little easier for us; then gradually added items as it went along. We had some interest from other nurseries in our area about buying liners from us, so we just stepped up production and never really looked back.

NM: What is your favorite part of the job?

MF: Just working with plants. I’m always adding new plants to our inventory, so learning how to propagate something new is fun for me. … We’ve started doing a lot more Chionanthus virginicus, which is a fringe tree, and it’s just a neat plant. I’ve enjoyed working with it, and there seems to be a lot of demand for it.

NM: When you’re not working, what are some of your hobbies?

MF: Well really, my hobby is more work. We have 200 head of cattle as well. I got into that at an early age, and it was a hobby that turned into a job (laughs). I also like to fly fish and bird hunt – pretty much anything and everything outdoors. I don’t like to be inside. I have a few buddies that I go hunting with, but mostly it’s just me and my bird dog, Honey. She's a little German wirehaired pointer.

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