Comments on Wade and Gatton Nursery by Tonya Laytart

My first experience with Wade and Gatton Nursery came during the field trip for H&CS 431 spring quarter 1998. At that time I didn't even like hosta, but after visiting Wade and Gatton Nursery, I couldn't help but like them. When I signed up for this class all I cared about was visiting Wade and Gatton and receiving the one credit hour for it. At the beginning of the trip, I decided that I would write my paper about Wade and Gatton Nursery without giving any of the other places that we visited the chance. Well to my surprise there were so many other great places that we visited that I would have also enjoyed writing about. Wade and Gatton nursery was started by Van Wade's grandfather on the land that their home was on. Van Wade the present owner still lives in the house found on the nursery land. Wade Gatton today is famous for the hosta collection that can be found there. What is interesting is that Van Wade didn't begin growing and selling hosta until the 1980s. Today newly 2,000 varieties and cultivars can be found there. In the 1980s Van Wade stated going to different membership's annual meetings. During these annual meetings he received the chance to tour many public and private gardens. At these meetings and tours he got the idea of creating his own gardens at his nursery. Today walls, ponds, bridges, and other structures can be found around the house along with large planting beds of hosta and other shade plants. To make it more helpful to the customers, each plant is also labeled so that they

can choose ones that they really like. He also creates other planted beds with container plants that are for sale so that the customer can get ideas of what they can do with the plants that they buy, or choose plants that they like planted together. Today along with the retail nursery, Wade and Gatton also has a whole sale business and landscape construction and installation. The nursery contains hundreds of acres of tree farms that his sons manage. Most of these trees go to landscape companies or they use for their own company. The installation company does both hardscapes and plantings. The company today has a lot of different aspects to it. They have to do different things in order to bring in money year round. They are still looking at expansion today. In fact Van Wade would like to build a series of walls on the property around the house in order to create more sales space for the nursery. Whenever you have a chance to visit Wade and Gatton Nursery, you should. You always come away with a little something, either pictures of the beautiful gardens, new ideas, or even a plant if you go for a field trip for school. If you are unable to visit the nursery, you can visit the hosta collection donated by them in the Chadwick Arboretum or on line at: www.pal-melto.com/hosta/wade/wade6.html.