CNLA Donates To The Zoo

BRIDGEPORT — Making their annual gift to the people of Connecticut, the state’s nurseries, landscapers, and garden centers will install an estimated $100,000 worth of landscaping in October for Connecticut’s Beardsley Zoo, Bridgeport — the state’s only zoo — as part of the annual PlantConnecticut program.

The project, organized each year by the Connecticut Nursery & Landscape Association (CNLA), is designed to focus attention on the value of Connecticut-grown products and encourage planting around the state, said Chuck Newman, chair of this year’s PlantConnecticut, and owner of Planters’ Choice Nursery of Newtown.

Every year since PlantConnecticut first began in 1950, the nurserymen have picked a different site around the state to do their complimentary planting and landscaping.

A volunteer crew of about 50 nursery workers from all over Connecticut will spend Tuesday and Wednesday, October 14–15, installing hundreds of trees, perennials, annuals, grasses, and other plants throughout the Zoo. It will be the biggest single donation in the history of CNLA and PlantConnecticut. More than 30 separate nursery and landscape companies will landscape much of the zoo’s grounds.

The plants will be donated by many of the state’s nursery growers. The production of plants and flowers is Connecticut’s biggest agricultural segment at approximately $949 million annually. Connecticut’s residents, because of their affluence, spend more per capita on flowers and plants than people of any other state. The Connecticut Nursery & Landscape Association represents more than 500 companies in the business.