Our History
Chestnut
Hill Tree Farm was started in 1981 by R.D. Wallace and his wife,
Deborah A. Gaw in Alachua, Florida, and was originally called Chestnut
Hill Nursery. Wallace is the grandson of Dr. R. T. Dunstan, noted plant
breeder and the first person to hybridize the French Vinifera wine
grapes and the American muscadine. Dunstan also developed the Dunstan
Hybrid Chestnut, a cross of a surviving American chestnut discovered in
Ohio in the 1950’s and USDA selections of Chinese chestnuts. Today, the
Dunstan Chestnuts are the most widely planted chestnut varieties in the
US, hold the only US Plant Patents ever given to chestnuts, and Chestnut
Hill Tree Farm is a national leader in the developing U.S. chestnut
industry.
Wallace’s
father, Dr. A.T. Wallace, was a plant geneticist and Dean for
Agricultural Research at the University of Florida in Gainesville. In
the 1960’s, Dr. Wallace had a graduate student from Japan who gave him a
gift of the 30 best persimmon varieties from the Okitsu Research
Station. Chestnut Hill has introduced many of these new varieties to the
commercial orchard industry, resulting in a thriving persimmon industry
in the South today.
In the 1990’s Chestnut Hill began working
closely with University of Florida plant breeders to introduce new
varieties of fruit trees that have been bred for the warm winter
climates of Florida and the Deep South. Chestnut Hill is the leading
grower of new low chill fruit trees from the University of Florida, and
supplies these trees to orchardists and garden centers throughout the
South. Chestnut Hill maintains over 20 acres of fruit orchards for
budwood and testing of new varieties. There is some kind of fresh fruit
ripening 12 months a year at the farm!
Chestnut
Hill has also introduced new kinds of flowering trees to the landscape
industry, including Taiwan Flowering Cherry that produces beautiful pink
blossoms and will bloom as far south as Orlando, and St. Lukes
Purple-leaf Plum, a low-chill flowering plum that holds its garnet leaf
color throughout the hot summers from Charleston to New Orleans. We
selected the Freedom Flowering Pear TM,
a new highly disease resistant variety of flowering Pear, from our own
breeding program. We grow many native flowering and landscape trees for
the South.
In 1998 and 1999, Chestnut Hill Tree Farm received
recognition as one of The Florida 100, the top 100 fastest growing
businesses in Florida.
Chestnut Hill Tree Farm is
located on 220 acres 4 miles from I-75, just northwest of Gainesville in
Alachua, Florida, and is conveniently located 5 hours from Charleston,
Atlanta, Pensacola and Miami.
OUR NEGATIVE CARBON FOOTPRINT
Since
1981, Chestnut Hill has sold enough trees to cover over a half a million
acres of land with forest or orchards. This many acres of trees can
sequester over 500,000 tons of carbon every year, or the equivalent of
removing over 83,000 full-sized cars from the road every year! We are
very proud of our effect on the health of the earth! What better result
of your efforts than producing your own food on trees in your backyard,
and offsetting the car you drive as well! You can do your part to
restore the planet by planting a tree, or better yet, 1000 trees!
|
|
|
