Peninsula In Passage

For years the garden-like settings of two wholesale nurseries – Bennett’s Creek Nursery and Lancaster Farms - dominated the Bridge Road/Shoulder’s Hill crossroads and became community landmarks. In their heyday, according to Wayne Sawyer, President and CEO of Bennett’s Creek Nursery, the nurseries employed about 250 people. Arthur J. “Junie” Lancaster, Jr. was the self-taught horticulturist who brought both landscape centers to Bennett’s Creek and the mentor who cultivated like-minded nurserymen to carry on the businesses. Lancaster and his wife, Millie, grew up together in Portsmouth and were a team from elementary school days. “We broke up

once for a few weeks to try dating others but that didn’t last.” Millie Lancaster says. The couple married in 1942

just as he joined the Army and was sent to Alaska. She worked at the telephone company and when Lancaster was discharged he went back to work for the Virginia Railroad. Millie Lancaster remembers, Junie and I used to go to Mr. Coleman’s place to buy plants to landscape our first home in Westhaven. Mr. Coleman was from Florida and was a very wealthy man. He lost it all in the crash and came to Portsmouth to start the nursery. He took Junie under his wing because he had no children. Junie decided to join Coleman’s in 1951 and I did all the bookkeeping. After Junie took over the business in 1965 we weren’t busy in the winter so he added the garden center, candy shop and gift shop. Then he had an idea for animated figures and added the Winter Wonderland. The employees put it all together. Lancaster started a growing operation, Lancaster Farms, in Bennett’s Creek to help supply Coleman’s. In 1974 after he sold Lancaster Farms, he opened Bennett’s Creek Nursery on 32 acres on Shoulder’s Hill Road, planning to move Coleman’s Nursery there. Junie and Millie Lancaster

Wayne Sawyer

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