Sam Bridge Nursery Needs Your Help

Sam Bridge Nursery & Greenhouses is a third generation family business that has been operating in the town of Greenwich, CT for 87 years. Due to excessive pressure from a neighbor, we were issued a cease and desist order from the town of Greenwich Zoning Enforcement Officer. The cease and desist order states that we have a "Landscaping Business Being Run Out of a Permitted Nursery."

According to the town's municipal code book (Division 2, Section 6-5 (11)), a commercial nursery shall mean a place where trees and other plants are grown for sale. Currently, the town does not have a definition for a landscaping business in the municipal code book. Although we find the Zoning Enforcement Officer to be a reasonable person, we believe that his interpretation of the town municipal code for nurseries is incorrect. We also believe that the current land use definition for nurseries, written in the 1940s, is vague and outdated. We will be asking the Zoning Board of Appeals to overturn Mr. Couture's decision and/or to amend our special exception to include landscaping.

When our father started this business in 1930, his business model was to grow and sell plants, plant related products, and services. In 1956 he moved his business from Doubling Road to its present location at 437 North Street. This property has been in our mother's family (Reynolds) for over 300 years and has always been a farm. The nursery and greenhouse business is considered farming; we operate under the Right to Farm Law and our property is assessed as farmland (PA490). Our family would like to keep this property as farmland rather than subdividing into house lots.

As part of running a nursery, we offer landscape design, installation, and garden maintenance services. These services are and have been an important aspect of selling the plants that we grow. These services also include many community outreach and special projects, several that we do free of charge for the town of Greenwich. Some of which are: planting and maintaining traffic islands, planting trees along public roads, growing and hanging the town baskets on Greenwich Avenue and the Post Road. We also work extensively with local community gardens, school groups, and non-profits. We do not cut grass, blow leaves, snow plow, perform masonry, and install lighting and irrigation or other services you would expect from a typical landscape company. We would like to ask for your support to help us overturn the zoning enforcement officer's decision and/or to amend the special exception for Sam Bridge Nursery & Greenhouses to include landscaping.