Hicks Nurseries Celebrating 170 years

HICKS NURSERIES TODAY

Our mission is to be your favorite destination for quality home, garden and outdoor living inspiration and solutions. We are dedicated to helping gardeners, homeowners and landscape professionals achieve their goals by offering expert advice and providing an outstanding selection of unique products. We make gardening success easy and enjoyable for everyone!

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“Our business philosophy has remained the same for six generations with a focus on the highest level of products and services for our community. We continue to be innovative and adjust our offerings to stay relevant and meet the changing needs of our customers.”

Stephen Hicks, President.

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Along with the largest selection of high-quality trees, annuals, perennials and houseplants on Long Island, we carry tools, seeds, fertilizers, outdoor furniture & accessories, arrangements, and garden accents.

New Hicks Nurseries Store Front
Greenhouse Hicks Nurseries Westbury NY
Greenhouse Pottery Wall

In the spring of 2019, we introduced an elevated shopping experience in the nursery yard for our customers.  Paved walkways and over a dozen permanent garden displays create a wonderful way to choose trees & shrubs for your landscape. If you need help in picking out your trees & shrubs visit the Nursery Help Center which houses different services we provide including planting, delivery, buy now-pick up later, and inquiries for complete landscape renovation. 

In fact, our multiple award-winning Landscapes design team is the go-to solution for everything from small foundation plantings for front yard curb appeal to major landscape redesign for a backyard oasis. We focus on a stress-free and pleasurable process for our customers providing the unparalleled service and reliability that Hicks has built its reputation on, since 1853.

Hicks Landscapes Front Yard Curb Appeal
Hicks Landscapes Pool
Hicks Landscapes Backyard Entertaining

We are also known for our highly anticipated annual events that bring the community together. The Spring Flower & Garden Show draws tens of thousands to see our stunning gardens in full bloom and gets everybody longing for the spring season ahead.

The Fall Harvest Festival features a myriad of family-friendly events including a hay maze, mum decorating, pumpkin decorating, lawn games, pictures with Otto the ghost, fall photo op areas, a Halloween pet parade and more. Our famous fudge and irresistible roasted corn on the cob are a must!

We also have two animated walkthrough stories for children during the course of the year. One takes place during the Fall Festival, featuring our famous ‘Otto the Ghost’, and the other for Christmas, featuring Santa Claus. Both shows emphasize the value of friendship and being of service to others. 

Flower Show Hicks Nurseries 2024
Fall Festival Hay Maze at Hicks Nurseries
Christmas Gallery at Hicks Nurseries

Introduced in 2008, Hicks Commercial Sales is our wholesale division serving horticultural professionals and quality-oriented landscape contractors with all the products they need, when they need them. In addition to a huge selection of wholesale nursery stock; trees, shrubs and perennials, Commercial Sales also houses an enormous selection of indoor plants, tropicals and annuals in our expanded greenhouses. In addition, we carry fertilizer, mulch, soil and other supplies. We are a one-stop-shop recognized for our vast selection, availability, convenience, and top notch customer service. Our client roster includes landscape contractors and designers, movie and television sets, zoos, golf courses, interior plantscapers, florists, municipalities and other garden centers.

Our continued promise to our customers across all divisions is to:

– Listen to your needs

– Provide the best shopping experience possible

– Provide the tools you need for garden inspiration and success

Thank you for being our valued customers.

HICKS IN HISTORY

Since 1853

The Hicks family started farming on Long Island as early as the late 1600s, but it was in 1853 that the business that was to become Hicks Nurseries, Inc. had its beginnings. Isaac Hicks began selling trees to his neighbors and thus his new company, Isaac Hicks and Son, was born. Since the first sale, Hicks Nurseries has maintained its reputation for providing carefully selected, top quality plant material. Each succeeding generation of the business has left its stamp on the nursery, responding to the current horticultural needs of the Long Island community.

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Helping create beautiful outdoor spaces for over 170 years. Nobody has helped more gardeners succeed in more ways than Hicks through the years.

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At the turn of the century, Isaac’s son Edward, who taught at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, invented and patented the equipment for moving big trees that were desired by Long Island’s new estate owners. Full grown trees – sometimes in full leaf – were carefully extracted from the earth and taken primarily to the Gold Coast mansions, where many still flourish today. Many of the most famous estates that included the Vanderbilt, JP Morgan and the Phipps (which is currently Old Westbury Gardens), coveted the unique landscaping services that Hicks offered in the early 1900’s.

PHOTO ARCHIVES

Edward’s son Henry was the first college-trained horticulturist in the family business becoming a premier botanist. After receiving his degree from the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell, Henry returned to Westbury, where he specialized in studying the suitability of new plants from Europe and Asia for the Long Island environment. He kept up a wide correspondence with the leading horticulturists of the day. One such correspondent was the chief plant explorer for the US Department of Agriculture, Frank Meyer, who roamed the earth looking for new plants. Whenever he came upon a new plant, he sent three back to the US. One went to the USDA in Beltsville, Maryland; one went to the Arnold Arboretum in Boston; and one went to Henry Hicks in Westbury. The cross-breeding of plants from different parts of the world was Henry’s forte, the best known being the Hicks Yew (Taxus x media Hicksii). This plant became – and remains today – one of the most widely used plants in the landscape industry throughout North America.

CATALOG ARCHIVES

William and Edwin Hicks (Henry’s sons) kept the business going during the Depression. Around 1930, in an innovative move, William made pre-dug plants available for customers. This marked the beginning of the walk-in, cash and carry customer business that developed into what is now called a retail garden center.

In the 1960s, with western Long Island’s evolution from a rural to a suburban community complete, Edwin’s son Alfred (Fred) saw the need to refocus the business in order to keep pace with the new generation of Long Islanders. At that time there were still 245 acres of nursery production in Westbury. Fred kept the best of what was already established, and over the next ten years converted the nursery into a thriving family-oriented retailing and growing operation that served hundreds of thousands of people each year. Garden center owners from across the country continue to visit every year to get ideas.

Two of Fred’s children lead the family business today, Stephen Hicks as President and Karen Hicks-Courts as Vice President of Human Resources.

Stephen is making his own mark on the family business to meet the growing and changing needs of customers. He launched Hicks Commercial Sales, oversaw the growth of Hicks Landscapes into the premier landscape design/build firm on Long Island, and lead the vision for the renovation of the entire retail store in 2023, it’s 170th anniversary year, providing customers with an entirely new and inspirational shopping experience. Under his leadership, he has elevated the standard for garden centers not just on Long Island but nationwide. 

One of the trickiest professional accomplishments is to successfully transfer a family business from one generation to the next. Very few small businesses make this transition past one generation. Hicks Nurseries has overcome many obstacles and has been able to not only survive but thrive as an industry leader and a vital part of the Long Island gardening and landscape community – through six generations. 

Since Isaac Hicks’ first sale, Hicks Nurseries has maintained its reputation for providing carefully selected, top quality plant material. Each succeeding generation of the business has left its stamp on the nursery, responding to the current horticultural needs of the Long Island community and beyond.

TOOL

Plant Finder

Find the ideal plant with our Plant Finder tool. Learn more about a specific plant’s attributes, growth and care.