Edgartown-based gardening giant Donaroma’s Nursery and Landscaping has applied to add retail sales, parking and, potentially, employee housing at a property on the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road in Oak Bluffs, where Donaroma’s currently runs its wholesale operations.
The retail expansion would be called Jordan’s Nursery, according to the application submitted to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission earlier this spring. Donaroma’s subleases the 7.5-acre parcel, owned by Bayes Norton Farm, from Bayes Norton’s lessee Atwood Farm LLC, according to a commission staff report.
The property now holds 15 commercial greenhouses and, in season, thousands of potted plants outside.
The Jordan’s Nursery plan calls for an additional retail greenhouse, two retail sheds, an office and storage building with 20 parking spaces and 32 additional spaces divided among three parking areas along a dirt road ringing the planned operation.
The plans also show a proposed pole barn to the rear of the site, with 25 parking spaces, and a “future four-bedroom dwelling” near an office and storage building.
Landowner Jamie Norton of Bayes Norton Farm has endorsed the project in a letter to the commission.
“We like all the growing activity at Jordan Nursery and see it as a compliment to our farming,” Mr. Norton wrote.
“Together, I envision a farm that will be an opportunity for grandchildren to continue,” his letter concluded.
The Oak Bluffs planning board referred the nursery proposal to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, based on several triggers in the commission’s checklist for developments of regional impact (DRIs).
The checklist items include a public place of assembly for 50 or more people, commercial development of more than 6,000 square feet outdoors, parking for more than 10 vehicles, high traffic generation and formula retail, among others regarding materials storage.
The commission’s public hearing on the Jordan’s Nursery proposal is likely to begin in July, once the applicant has submitted additional documents, administrator Lucy Morrison told the Gazette this week.
If approved, the project would clear more room for development at Donaroma’s Edgartown property, subject to regional and local permitting.
The company moved its wholesale business to the Oak Bluffs site in 2022 while continuing to run the retail operation on Upper Main street, an area increasingly being eyed for infill housing.
Last October, the Martha’s Vineyard Commission denied developer William Cumming’s application for a 55-unit, mixed-income condominium complex on 3.4 acres of the Donaroma’s Edgartown property, saying the project was too dense for the site.
Mr. Cumming subsequently sued the commission over the denial in Dukes County Superior Court, and won a separate ruling from the state housing appeals committee that effectively shuts the MVC out of the approval process for developments with affordable housing. The commission is appealing that decision and the Dukes County case is ongoing.
On June 11, the commission meets to continue a public hearing on another proposed housing development on Upper Main street, behind the Dairy Queen, where the property owners are seeking to build 15 apartments.
The commission also will deliberate and render its decision on an application from the membership-only Vineyard Golf Club in Edgartown to build a new pro shop, cart barn, loading dock and patio, expand its restaurant deck and add 34 parking spaces.
The project also calls for locker room renovations, drainage improvements and the partial relocation of a driveway on the property, which is located on West Tisbury Road.
The commission’s land use planning committee voted Monday to recommend approval of the project.
This article appears in June 12, 2026.
After all the vitriol around a turf field and nobody is clamoring about the massive amount of plastic sitting there. Come on board of health. Lift your artificial turf thing or actually do your jobs and be consistent and ban all this plastic. It’s disgusting everyone caved to special interest groups but call it a nursery and everyone looks the other way.
Mr Hughes…while you’re partially correct. Please know that many of us didn’t cave, we continue to work against this ever expanding project.
I’m opposed to this proposal because of traffic.
Anyone who drives from Vineyard Haven toward Edgartown in the morning already knows what happens. Traffic routinely backs up from the roundabout all the way to Sea Glen Road. Not once in a while — practically every weekday.
It’s gotten bad enough that many of us already take alternate routes just to avoid that stretch of road. When people are changing their normal route because a road is consistently jammed, that’s a pretty good indication it’s already overburdened.
Now we’re talking about adding a retail nursery, more parking, more employees, more customers and more delivery traffic to the same corridor.
Donaroma’s is already a very successful business with an established retail operation in Edgartown. It’s fair to ask whether the public should absorb even more traffic so a private company can expand yet again.
And this discussion is taking place before we even get to the height of the summer season, when traffic volumes increase dramatically and the backups become even longer. Anyone who drives this road regularly knows that it doesn’t take much to turn a slow-moving line of cars into a complete bottleneck.
From a traffic standpoint, this feels like adding another layer to an existing problem that nobody has figured out how to solve. The MVC should take a very hard look at the traffic impacts before approving this project.
Based on the calendar looks like the planning board meeting re: the Dairy Queen project is scheduled for June 16 at 4:30 – come be hear Pinehurst and Chase road neighbors!
Please stop this nonsense now….Look at what is happening at the Y, rink, development….How do you think all that housing is going to impact the already crazy Vineyard Edgartown road? I beg no more development on the already over taxed road…..
Let’s impose a stop building on all that impacts the Edgartown, Vineyard Haven road….Our island is being ruined …A stop building moratorium is needed immediately…