In May 1911 two British landscape architects Howard Dunington-Grubb and his wife Lorrie settled in Toronto to set up one of Canada’s first landscape architecture firms. They soon found out that they were going to have to do something about the lack of locally grown ornamental plant material.

In 1913 they purchased 100 acres of land in Ontario near the village of Sheridan, named after the Irish Playwright Richard Sheridan and now part of Oakville. An ad in a British journal soon brought a young Swedish born nurseryman, Herman Stensson and his wife and four young sons to Canada to establish this new nursery in the spring of 1914. A daughter, Betty born in Canada a few years later, completed the family.

The first catalogue was released in the fall of 1914 for the 1914-1915 gardening season. Growth was rapid and by 1926 the nursery had grown to 250 acres with an extensive selection of trees, shrubs, evergreens, roses and perennials. The company continued to grow through the war and post war years when farms were added north of Georgetown, Ontario.