A nursery is a place where plants are propagated, usually for sale as a business, though some gardeners and farmers keep private nurseries. Typical plants grown in a nursery would include fruit trees or bushes, home landscapeshrubbery and trees, and started plants for gardeners. Plants may be propagated by seeds, but often desirable cultivars are propagated as clones by budding, grafting, layering, or other nursery techniques.
There are retail nurseries which sell to the general public, wholesale nurseries which sell only to other nurseries and to commercial landscape gardeners, and private nurseries which supply the needs of institutions or private estates.
Nurseries often grow plants in a greenhouse, a building of glass or in plastic tunnels, designed to protect young plants from harsh weather (especially frost), while allowing access to light and ventilation.
Some nurseries specialize in one phase of the process: propagation, growing out, or retail sale; or in one type of plant: groundcovers, shade plants, fruit trees, or rock garden plants.
nursery, in horticulture, an establishment or area for the propagation, breeding, and early cultivation of plants.
Under nursery conditions varieties of plants have been bred that have greater yields and are hardier, longer blooming, and more disease resistant than those grown in the ordinary farm or garden, where controlled selection and hybridization is usually impractical (see plant breeding).
Grafting and budding are also commonly used by nurseries to produce superior plants, and some plants are now propagated from cells grown in a sterile medium.
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