Abrahamson Nurseries History

When Highway 95 moved to its current path in the late 1940s, the nursery moved with it, and the new store was built in its current location.  In the early years of the business, greenhouse bedding plants, ornamental shrubs, and fruit trees were the main focus.  Like today, we grow most of our plants, starting them as much smaller plants and then growing them for a few seasons.  The annuals were sold out of a tiny greenhouse that was essentially a repurposed streetcar from St. Paul.  There was no gift shop or landscape installation, the business was based solely on plant sales.  The landscape design and installation part of the business began post-World War II, as more homes were being built in Scandia and surrounding communities.    

The nursery began to change and grow after Dan and Sue Sandager purchased it from the Abrahamson family in 1972.  They quickly added a small gift shop to the nursery store and greenhouse and expanded the landscape design and installation part of the business, which began to take off in the late 70s.  There was increased demand for higher-quality residential landscaping, and the communities in the north and east suburbs began to expand rapidly.  The landscape work was done entirely by hand - shovels, wheelbarrows, hand tools, and manpower were enough to complete all landscaping projects during those early years.  

The business continued to develop in the 1980s - we opened our Stillwater store in 1982 and built new retail greenhouses at our Scandia location.  Landscape design and installation also grew with our move to Stillwater, as we added design staff and landscape crew members to be based out of that location.  We also mechanized our installation process over time, adding loaders, and other power equipment, like trenchers, compactors, and sod cutters, so that we could be as efficient as possible.  This also made our landscape crew much happier!

In our more recent history, we revamped our tree and shrub-growing ranges at our Scandia location in 2005.  As part of the project, we were able to completely regrade the site so that we could catch all of our irrigation water and recycle it through a holding pond on site.  This made our water use drop significantly and made our irrigation system much more efficient.  In 2009, we added our St. Croix Falls, WI location.  This location provided enough greenhouse space for us to be able to grow our own annuals for all three of our stores.  Over the years, we added extra growing houses to allow for more production room.  In 2017, we built the existing retail greenhouse at our Scandia location, and the doors opened for our 2018 season.    

Today, the Nursery is run by Dan and Sue’s son, Greg, and his wife Andrea.  Dan still pops in and helps out where he can, but the day to day business decisions are made by Greg and Andrea.  Greg grew up at the nursery, so he’s been working here since he could hold a shovel.  He graduated from the University of Minnesota - Duluth with a bachelor's degree in Business Management.  When he isn’t coordinating the landscape crew, you will often see Greg getting his hands dirty around our stores, whether he’s bringing plants to every location, fixing broken equipment, tweaking irrigation, or potting trees, he’s involved in all aspects of the company.  Andrea runs the business and human resources side of the company.  She spends most of her time crunching all the numbers, data, and information that go into running and keeping a business current and up to date, but is always available to support our staff.  On busy spring days, their son, Howie, can be found in the Scandia greenhouse selling his famous Howie’s Hotdogs.  As a family, they enjoy spending time at their cabin, traveling, snowmobiling, motorcycle trips, and playing board games.  

Over the years, we’ve grown and changed in many ways - for example, we went from growing most of our plants in the ground during the early years to now growing in containers, and from an experienced, educated staff mostly made up of family members, to a much more extensive group of professional employees.  We’ve also gone from doing all our work by hand to mainly being mechanized around the nursery and landscape installation projects.  We’ve gone from just selling plants to being a full-service greenhouse and nursery, a garden center, and a thriving landscape design and installation department.  All of this has been accomplished through the hard work and dedication of our excellent staff throughout the years and the focus on quality and service above all else.  Because of that focus, we went from a small operation at the start of the revolution in the nursery industry to one of the larger nurseries in the Twin Cities metro area.  That passion for quality and service will continue into the future, and we hope to show it to each person who comes through our doors.  Thank you to all who have been a part of our story and to those who will become the next generation of plant lovers in the St. Croix Valley.