Jordan’s Nursery, which recently raised environmental concerns on the Island, was discussed by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission (MVC) for the first time on Thursday, Oct. 8.
Commissioners also toured the property earlier that day, which is owned and operated by three well-known developers and company owners.
Michael Donaroma, the operator of the nursery and lessee of seven acres of Jordan’s Nursery as well as the longtime owner of Donaroma’s Nursery in Edgartown, sat in front of the MVC on Thursday night to provide an overview of Jordan’s Nursery, a new operation located at 218 Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road. Donaroma was a former commissioner for around a decade and was a member of the Edgartown Select Board from 2003 to 2025.
“It’s no different than Mahoney’s or any other nursery on the Island,” Donaroma told commissioners on Thursday. “But I’m hoping that I’m a much bigger grower than anybody else on the Island.”
The whole property spans 17 acres of land, which is owned by Bayes Norton Farm or Jamie Norton. Norton also owns a farm near Jordan’s Nursery and stated in MVC materials that he plans to merge some retail operations. Norton has an active lease of those acres with Atwood LLC, which is owned by housing developer William Cumming. Cumming is known on the Island for his proposals of Chapter 40B projects, such as Edgartown Gardens. Chapter 40B is a state statute that lets developers curb certain zoning restrictions if a project consists of a quarter affordable units.
Donaroma detailed some of this history to commissioners on Thursday night. “Mr. Norton has a piece of property that I’m leasing right now. And he was notified by the Town of Oak Bluffs that his tax exemption for agricultural use was getting slim because he wasn’t using that property enough,” Donaroma explained to commissioners.
“He didn’t want to develop it. He wanted it to be used in agriculture, so I raised my hand, and I said, yeah, ‘I’d love to have five acres, six acres.’ I think now it’s almost seven acres,” Donaroma said.
Donaroma started constructing Jordan’s Nursery over the past few years. The nursery is fully operational at this point with polyhouse greenhouses, a well, potted plants, landscape fabric, and Donaroma’s trucks parked outside. He said the former Oak Bluffs building inspector, Matthew Rossi, was kept abreast of all construction. Rossi moved to Edgartown, where he’s been the building inspector since July.
Donaroma was referred to the MVC by the new Oak Bluffs building inspector, Adam Petkus, because of proposed commercial expansion and retail operations, which Petkus said triggered the need for a development of regional impact (DRI) review. Among those expansions is a glass greenhouse Donaroma wants to install on the property, which is more than 3,000 square feet in size. He said the greenhouse was made available recently by an Island family, and he would like to house a retail center in it eventually.
Also on Thursday, Donaroma told commissioners he wanted to address one of the “elephants in the room”: fertilizer use. He brought the fertilizer he uses for his containerized plants to the room. It was a small, plug-shaped item, which he said is called Osmocote.
“This is what I use,” he said. “Again, I’m a container grower. I don’t grow anything in the ground on this site. Never have and I don’t think I ever will.”
Commissioners asked if Donaroma uses any other fertilizers, and if he foresees objections to his operations from the Island community. He said he uses a “liquid fertilizer” in the polyhouses, which he said was a Peters Professional fertilizer. And per objections, he said he had heard some environmental concerns thus far, such as ones about water runoff, fertilizer use, and water use.
“I buy plants from off-Island,” he said. “There’s all kinds of questions and points that have been brought up. It would take years to figure that out. I think the best method would be if everything’s running into my pond,” Donaroma said.
Tisbury commissioner Ben Robinson asked if Donaroma put “anything in the record that outlines how this operation interacts with zoning.”
The question prompted a discussion of the Dover Amendment, which is a state law that includes zoning exemptions for religious, educational, and agricultural land uses. Nurseries can be considered agricultural use but not always. And the Dover Amendment doesn’t exempt a project from regulation under MVC review.
A continued public hearing and testimony on Jordan’s Nursery is scheduled for Oct. 29.
