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One in an occasional series.
In 1981, a group of summer interns was clearing an overgrown section in the northern part of Kissena Park in Flushing, when they came upon an area filled with a variety of unusual trees.
The students had stumbled on the remnants of Samuel Bowne Parsons' 19th century nursery - and in doing so, they helped clear away the cobwebs that had formed around the largely forgotten legacy of Flushing, once the great center of horticulture in America.
For almost two centuries, this little Queens community was renowned on both sides of the Atlantic for its rare trees and shrubs and the nurseries that collected, grew and exported them. The most well-known was the one started by the Prince family around 1735. Believed to be the first commercial nursery in America, it was deemed important enough that when the British took control of Long Island after the Battle of Brooklyn in 1776, Gen. William Howe posted a guard at the gardens. According to one early 20th century historian, the British enjoyed the fruits of the Prince groves and hothouses: "In many an English garden today flourishes a tree or shrub sent back from Prince's nursery during the war." Thirteen years later, after America had won its independence, Howe's old nemesis, George Washington - by then, president of the United States - visited the nursery during his 1789 tour of Long Island. (The original Prince nursery was located...