Central Jersey Nurseries

Planted Here Since 1970

Vince Lipani came to Hillsborough looking for land. He found 20 acres, bought it, and started digging trees out of the ground to sell them. His original plan had been to build a lumber yard on the site, and when his father came down to see the property for the first time, the elder Lipani reportedly looked around and asked if they were still in New Jersey. It was that far out in the middle of nowhere.

The lumber yard never happened. What grew instead was Central Jersey Nurseries, one of the longest-running family businesses in town.

Over the following decades, the business expanded well beyond its tree farm roots. Vince moved into residential landscaping, then commercial work with the developers who built much of Hillsborough through the seventies, eighties, and nineties. In the mid-to-late eighties, he bought a local lawnmower shop called Leo’s Lawnmowers, which had operated out of the space on Route 206 at Amwell Road where Five Guys Burgers now sits, and brought it under the nursery’s roof.

Vince eventually handed the business to his sons. Shawn and Troy both grew up in the business and now run it together, with Shawn overseeing the equipment shop and Troy managing the garden center. Between the two of them, they cover everything their father built.

Vince left his mark on the property in other ways too. Out front, there’s an oak tree that stands roughly 80 feet tall. Vince started lighting it up with white lights after a visit to Tavern on the Green in New York, where he was struck by the illuminated trees on the property. The light display has been a fixture ever since, running on a timer most nights of the year, not just at the holidays.

Shawn says one of the most common things he hears from new customers is that they had no idea the place was there, despite having lived in Hillsborough for years. But once they find it, they tend to come back. In fact, many of the faces he sees today are second and third generation.