At the annual meeting of the Vermont Nursery and Landscape Association (VNLA) meeting last week, Sally and Tobi von Trapp received the 2025 Horticultural Achievement Award.
According to the VNLA nomination, the von Trapps began their business in 1980 with a small farm and greenhouse and three young children. For a decade Tobi grew vegetables on a two-acre plot and sold produce to restaurants. Sally’s love of flowers and her horticultural degree led to a shift to annual and perennials production over 30-plus years ago. Tobi prepared an adjacent hayfield, and created a display garden which became an attraction in its own right.
"This (garden) was my laboratory, my test combinations. I thought people would never get a sense of what I was selling otherwise," he explained. "I wanted people to be overwhelmed by beauty – we are in the beauty business. Beauty is my calling,"
By 2021 the business had expanded to 13,600 square feet of space in six greenhouses. That Labor Day, after 41 years, they decided to close their business. Their daughter, Emily von Trapp, began using the space 13 years ago to grow 3,000 tulips in fall, overwinter them and force bloom for her cut flower business. Last fall she started 200,000 specialty bulbs. Her flowers can be found at 14 Vermont markets.
