John McGinnis began a specialty business in tropical plant care and winter storage in 2001 in Norfolk, Connecticut. His modest first steps included catering to a small clientele in the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts, providing winter greenhouse care for tropical heirloom family treasures. To this day, many of these original clients continue to entrust their most prized plant collections to t
he Gardens at Cheshire. In the years since, the business has expanded to fill a growing niche market, offering an alternative to New England tropical plant owners who would otherwise replace their collections of beautiful plants each year. By wintering their collections at Gardens at Cheshire greenhouses, owners of the most exquisite tropical plants are able to protect their investment, and see them return, healthy and beautiful, year after year. Southern New England’s finest landscape designers and contractors appreciate the reliable and safe seasonal transport that has come to be a trademark of Gardens at Cheshire. The need to select and acquire new plantings each year is eliminated, and landscapers welcome the security of knowing that their clients’ treasured pool, patio, and estate plantings will be delivered when the landscape is readied for them each spring. From a design perspective, the returning collection offers a reliable foundation that creative landscape designers can build upon, enhance, or vary from year to year. Gardens at Cheshire specializes in winter care of Hibiscus, Ivy topiary, Gardenia, Mandevilla, Agave, Agapanthus, Lantana, palms, and a variety of trees, including citrus, fig, banana and olive trees. With a long established and loyal clientele drawn from Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York Gardens at Cheshire cares for more than a hundred species of plants each winter season and safely transports and stores plants up to eighteen feet in height. Since its beginning days in northwestern Connecticut, John McGinnis moved his business south and has operated in Cheshire, Connecticut since 2006. Gardens at Cheshire is located at Zentek Farms, in the heart of the state’s greenhouse industry.
