Growing History: The Legacy of Princeton Nurseries

New Jersey is often called the “Garden State,” but few locations earned that title quite like the village of Kingston in South Brunswick.

Hidden just off the bustling Route 1 corridor is the Mapleton Preserve. To the casual hiker, it looks like a peaceful park with old greenhouses and walking trails. But for nearly a century, this was the site of Princeton Nurseries—which, at its peak, held the title of the largest commercial nursery in the United States.

From disease-resistant elms to the maples that line your street today, this site is where the American suburb was “grown.”

Putting Down Roots

The story begins with the Flemer family. Originally owners of F&F Nursery in Springfield, NJ, William Flemer Sr. felt Union County was developing too fast in the early 1900s. He needed space—and lots of it.

After a two-year search spanning the East Coast, he settled on Kingston, NJ, in 1911. The location was a logistical masterpiece:

The Soil: Rich, stone-free land south of Carnegie Lake.
The Transit: Positioned perfectly between Philadelphia and New York City, with access to the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Delaware and Raritan Canal.

By 1913, the family had consolidated 265 acres of farmland. William Flemer Jr., just 18 years old at the time, was sent to run it.

The “Green” Factory

Princeton Nurseries wasn’t just a farm; it was a massive operation.

To create a unified sense of community, Flemer painted almost all the employee housing and operational buildings a distinctive pale yellow with white trim.

The Headquarters: Built in 1917, the main office (now the D&R Canal State Park Headquarters) was designed to look like a Bavarian hunting lodge with sweeping eaves.
The Infrastructure: They built their own blacksmith shop to repair tools, warehouses for cold storage, and a massive irrigation system that eventually supplied water to the entire village of Kingston.

Inventing Better Trees

The Flemers didn’t just grow trees; they engineered them.

William Flemer Sr. and his descendants specialized in plant propagation and cloning. They sought to create trees that were uniform, hardy, and beautiful—perfect for the post-WWII housing boom and the rise of the American suburb.

Grafting, illustrated above, was a key technique used at the nursery. By taking a shoot (scion) from a tree with desirable traits—like red fall color or disease resistance—and splicing it onto a hardy rootstock, the nursery could produce thousands of identical, high-quality clones.

Famous Innovations:

The Princeton Elm: Developed in 1922, this tree was resistant to Dutch Elm Disease before the disease even decimated the US in the 1930s. Thanks to this foresight, thousands of American Elms survived.
October Glory Red Maple: If you see a maple tree turn a brilliant, consistent crimson in the fall, it is likely one of these.
Shademaster Locust: A standard street tree found in cities across America.

In total, the Flemers patented nearly 60 different varieties of shade trees.

A Community at Work

At its height, the nursery sprawled over 1,200 acres across South Brunswick, Plainsboro, West Windsor, and Franklin.

It employed approximately 150 people, many of whom were seasonal laborers from Puerto Rico. The Flemers were known for offering generous benefits and housing that rivaled union standards of the time, creating a loyal workforce that returned year after year.

From Industry to Open Space

As the 20th century wound down, the “Garden State” began to develop. Squeezed by suburban sprawl, Princeton Nurseries moved its operations to Allentown, NJ, in 1995. After more than 90 years of greening America, the company officially closed its doors in 2010.

However, the original Kingston site was not lost to bulldozers. In 2005, the State of New Jersey and South Brunswick Township acquired the core 240+ acres to create the Mapleton Preserve.

If You Visit

Today, the preserve is a hauntingly beautiful blend of nature and industrial history. You can walk the old nursery roads, see the skeletal remains of the propagation greenhouses, and admire the arboretum planted near the entrance—a living tribute to the family that shaped the landscape of the United States.

Location: 145 Mapleton Road, Princeton, NJ 08540.
What to do: Hiking, birdwatching, and photography. The trails are flat and accessible.
Don’t Miss: The “tree lines.” You will spot rows of exotic and specimen trees growing in straight lines in the middle of the woods—remnants of the nursery inventory that were never harvested.