With the last possible frost traditionally forecast for mid-May in the mid-Hudson, it’s now the prime time of year to be getting new plants into the ground. If all you want are some annuals, salad greens or vegetables, you have plenty of easy choices from which to source them: greenhouses, farmstands, even grocery and hardware stores. But what if you’re ready to tackle serious landscaping? What if your thinly populated front yard is crying out for trees or shrubs that are too big to cram into your hatchback? What if you need a little guidance from a more experienced hand at landscape design – perhaps even the use of some heavy machinery?
If you live anywhere within a reasonable radius of Kingston, you are the type of client whom Augustine Nursery was founded to serve, half a century ago this year. The decision not to try to duplicate what the competition was offering was a very deliberate business plan, according to Ron Augustine, who co-founded the company with his brother in 1974. “Mike and I started back when, with a lawnmower and a Dodge Dart,” he says. “We started out doing yard work, and then opened a nursery in the mid-‘70s. But then Adams, Lowe’s and Home Depot came along, selling similar stock to us: plants you could fit in your car. We knew we had to survive, so we made a decision to handle larger-size shrubs and trees.”
The Augustine family first moved to Kingston in 1957. “Our dad was the day manager at the Red Apple Rest [in Tuxedo]. Then he established the Trailways Cafeteria in Midtown and ran it for almost 15 years. Before they had express buses, busloads of passengers en route to Albany would get off at Kingston and come in for something to eat,” Ron relates. “I worked for him as a kid, but I was more of an Earth child. I liked working with soil.”
The Augustine brothers found their specialized market niche, growing their own nursery stock in the backyard of their childhood home in the Sunset Park development and soon thriving well enough to expand to a lot across the street. In 1986 they took the plunge to acquire 5.5 acres on their current site at the corner of Route 9W and Van Kleeck Lane in the Town of Ulster, just a little way north of the Kingston city line. With the addition of a stoneyard and hardscaping area, that parcel has now expanded to seven parklike acres, where visitors are welcome to wander during business hours and visualize how they’d like to enhance their home landscapes. “We get a lot of people coming over from the auto dealerships on 9W while they’re waiting for their cars to be serviced,” Ron notes happily.
Augustine Nursery does a lot more than retail sales of large growing things, however. It’s a full-service landscaping and design firm, with Ron doing most of the estimating and designing until recently; he’s “semi-retired” now, with his nephew Mike Augustine, Jr. picking up more of his role over the past seven years. “The most gratifying part of my job is going to a home and seeing its potential. Most of the time we can turn them around in a day,” Ron says. “It taps into his artistic side,” says Mike Jr. Mike Sr. is responsible for all the buying and scheduling, while his wife Penny runs the retail side of the operation.
How deeply the Augustine Nursery crew gets involved in a landscape transformation depends entirely on the customer, Ron explains. Some need their hands held from start to finish, while others are do-it-yourselfers who “have read all the books and know exactly what they want.” The business is fully equipped to undertake as much or as little of the labor as the customer’s needs warrant, with a fleet of excavators, diggers, trenchers and lifters that can plant a tree up to 18 feet tall, build a garden wall, lay a bluestone path or patio or install a water feature. As Ron observes, “You can get instant gratification with size.”
And where do those big trees and shrubs come from? Some species are imported, mainly from Oregon. But for the most part, the Augustines grow their own. They bought their first farm — ten acres on Sawkill Road — in the 1990s, and by the early 2000s had expanded to three different locations. “We have a total of 60 acres of growing space, with about 20,000 trees in production at any given time,” says Mike Jr. Ron contrasts the trees they import, whoserootballs are often full of rocks or hard clay, with the trees they grow themselves in “the most beautiful soil. It’s right along the Esopus Creek.” If a customer’s own site needs soil amendments — or mulch or gravel — Augustine Nursery is ready to deliver it.
At one time, in the 1980s and ‘90s, the Augustines were heavily involved in “commercial work: malls, highways, schools, hospitals, colleges. It was the best education I could’ve gotten. I worked with over 100 landscape architects over the years,” Ron says. “Now, we’re doing more like 80 percent residential. Commercial work is nice, but there’s nothing artistic about it.” With big developments, he notes, the main motivation is often to do the minimum of landscaping required by the local planning board. Homeowners, by contrast, want their personal viewscapes to be beautiful. These days, plenty of smaller commercial landscapers and architects rely on Augustine to supply their shrubs, trees and planting materials.
Asked what else has changed in their business over 50 years, the Augustines note that organic, Zen and pollinator gardens have become popular in recent decades, as well asedible landscaping. There’s much more awareness about using native plants and eliminating invasive species, such as autumn olive, winged euonymus, Callery pear and yellow bamboo. Many homeowners want to reduce water consumption, pesticide applications and maintenance in general. “I’m a flower child. I’m not big on chemicals,” Ron says.
“Smaller is better” these days when it comes to high-maintenance manicured lawns, though a balance must be struck on account of wildflower meadows being prime deer tick habitat. Customers are always looking for deer-resistant plants, and “One of the most popular requests is for screening.”
A big part of Ron’s job, as an aesthetic consultant, is to advise clients on bloom succession, so that a garden area always has something new coming into flower, with harmonious color combinations and varied heights. He’s an enthusiastic proponent of choosing varieties based on their fragrance – especially Viburnum carlesii. “I try to put at least one in every yard.” He doesn’t need to tout ornamental grasses, which are extremely popular now, and perfect for slopes: “I can’t keep them on the shelves!”
Listening to the Augustines talk is enough to make anyone want to go out and redesign their property, with a little advice from the experts. “I’ve been in thousands of yards; I’ve seen every possible problem you can come up with,” says Ron. “There’s usually a solution to all the problems.”
Augustine Nursery will be celebrating its 50th anniversary with a variety of special events, including a monthly raffle and, at some point this summer, a 50-percent-off nursery sale. From May through August, the company will sponsor a monthly hour of “the best songs of 1974” on WDST Radio. Meanwhile, you can take a stroll through the verdant grounds at 177 Van Kleeck Lane between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Sundays. To set up a landscaping consultation, call (845) 338-4936. To learn more, visit https://augustinenursery.com.
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