By Andrew Bunting, PHS Vice President of Horticulture
Steve Mostardi (pictured) has been a horticultural leader in the Delaware Valley for decades. His parents started Mostardi Nursery in Newtown Square in the 1970s, and Steve and his wife, Cecelia, have managed and now own the business since its early days. Steve is a third-generation gardener; his Italian grandfather was an estate gardener on the Main Line.
In the late 1970s, Mostardi Nursery exhibited at the Philadelphia Flower Show and, for 20 years, maintained a booth in the Marketplace. Steve has held many leadership positions in the horticultural industry. He served on the board of the Pennsylvania Landscape and Nursery Association (PLNA) and continues to serve on its Government Relations Committee. He has also served on the board of directors for AmericanHort and was president of the Horticulture Research Institute, the scientific foundation of AmericanHort.
Steve has been a great champion of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society for decades where he has served on the board of directors and for decades, he has been chairman of the Gold Medal Plant Award. This committee of regional professionals, review nominations for trees, shrubs, vines and perennials and selects six winners each year. This program was started in 1979 and today is an excellent source of stalwart ornamental plants for the Mid-Atlantic.
I visit Mostardi Nursery several times throughout the growing season. I appreciate the wide variety of plants that they offer, and they have a section of the nursery specifically for the promotion of Gold Medal plants. When I visit, I often have conversations with Steve about new plants that he is offering and what type of attributes he is looking for in his plant selections. We have had many conversations about deer resistant plants. Many resources might claim that a plant is “deer proof”, but that is often a stretch of the truth. Where Steve’s home garden is located, he gets significant pressure from local deer populations. This has provided him with a laboratory of sorts to determine what plants are resistant to deer browsing. Some of his favorites include the Florida anise, Illicium floridanum; the sweet box, Sarcococca hookeriana; cultivars of the winter daphne, Daphne odora and all the selections of holly olive, Osmanthus heterophyllus.
Today, the garden center is 50 years old, and Steve and Cecelia are still running the business, with their sons, Michael and Paul, now involved in different aspects of the operation as the fourth generation of Mostardis promoting gardening in the Delaware Valley.
