OUR TEAM
OUR CORE VALUES
Faith
Our core values and business practices are directed by our Christian faith.
Integrity
Honesty and Truthfulness are foundational to our business and we seek to do what is morally and ethically right.
Passion
We strive to enthusiastically share our love for agriculture by connecting people with plants, fruit, and the farm.
Family
The Saunders Brothers Family includes and fosters many diverse families, generations, races, religions, and nationalities.
Strategy
To be a premier supplier of superb-quality plant material for garden centers, landscapers, and public gardens throughout the Eastern United States.
To be a premier supplier of extraordinary fruit to the people in the Mid-Atlantic area.
Business Purpose
To make a profit doing something we love.
To have a positive impact on our employees, customers, suppliers, community, and environment.
To provide a productive, nurturing, and fulfilling environment for our team.
THE HISTORY OF SAUNDERS BROTHERS
by Paul Saunders
The date was 1915. My father and four of his brothers, from a family of eleven children, decided to form a partnership and share the money that had been made trapping rabbits, and Saunders Brothers was born. With the coming of the Great Depression, money became tight and most of the family was forced to take jobs elsewhere. However, three of the brothers (Dick, Doc, and Sam (my father)) maintained the farm partnership thanks to dedicated helpers and sharecroppers, while working off the farm jobs. Everyone pitched in during harvest time. The brothers shipped apples in three-bushel barrels overseas, and when a neighbor received an unheard-of price of $1.00 for a bushel of peaches, they planted around 70 acres of peaches, almost overnight!
I propagated my first boxwood in the spring of 1947. A multi-talented science teacher and my mother showed me how to make cuttings for propagation. Intrigued, I chose the north side of the red clay, piney-thicket hillside near our current office as my propagation site. An 11-year old friend helped me with the project. We stuck 77 slips into the red earth, which was cooled by its northern exposure, and was shaded by the pines. We watered them every few days from the little spring branch that was at the bottom of the hill. From this almost impossibly primitive beginning, 25 of the plants rooted. I was truly excited, and at the age of 13, bought out my partner.
Encouraging my interest, my father fenced off behind our house a corner of the barn lot near the woodpile for my nursery. The manure that had accumulated for years in the milk cow lot, plus organic matter from the woodpile, provided a nearly ideal environment for my venture. My small nursery began to grow, and I found people willing to buy the boxwood. The money helped pay for my wife's engagement ring and my first Ford car. I became very busy running my full-time surveying business while farming also to make money to feed a house full of seven sons. Needing room to expand, I chose to plant the boxwood on the fertile river bottom land. Then, I made the observation that people were beginning to grow plants in containers. My wife, Tatum, helped out by driving around in a pickup truck full of children to county schools and the local pie factory, picking up discarded gallon tins.
On August 19, 1969, Hurricane Camille dumped more than twenty inches of rain on our countryside in one horrible night of destruction and loss of life. Almost all our ten acres of plants on the river bottom were destroyed, along with the container nursery on the riverbank. Only a few plants high on a pine covered hill near our old orchard reservoir survived. With this as a nucleus, the container nursery was re-established. Eventually our customers wanted our boxwood in plastic containers, and we changed to suit their needs.
As time passed, my seven sons went away to college. Then, one by one, several of them returned. Tom and his wife, Lyn, both horticulturists, came home to work in the nursery. Bennett took over field production as well as the peach orchards, most of which he converted into more productive apple orchards. Robert returned to help us with our construction program of new plastic houses, then later became our salesman. Next, Jim, who began as a county extension agent, returned to help with our cattle, and has taken over our personnel duties and farm market. (His wife Amy is now our payroll clerk.) Two other biological sons, Massie and Sam worked in the business at one time. Both still live locally, and Sam is a landscaper while Massie is a Land Surveyor and Engineer. John chose not to return to our farm but married into a local farming family and today helps manage that business. Along the way, Frank, a French-Canadian by birth and a master mechanic, became another member of our family team.
And now with great joy, I am happy to say we have begun hiring my grandchildren into parts of our business. Marshall in our field operations and sales and Annie and James both in our shipping department along with multiple other duties.
Today my sons and grandchildren along with their families and a dedicated team of employees make up the Saunders Family. From all of us here at Saunders Brothers, thank you for trusting our team, believing in our products, and making our business a family tradition.
Paul M. Saunders