We had such a blast meeting so many of you over the past few weeks, we thought we’d take a minute to introduce ourselves. Right now, our NewGen team is made up of just two boxwood enthusiasts, Bennett Saunders and Lindsay Day, leading the charge of the Boxwood Revolution.
Bennett Saunders learning a new pruning technique to combat Boxwood Blight.
Bennett Saunders leads our team as the General Manager, bringing over 36 years of experience in the industry to our team. He balances his NewGen responsibilities with his other duties as the Chief of Operations for Field and Fruit Production for Saunders Brothers Nursery. This means not only can he share a wealth of knowledge on all thing’s boxwood, but he has years of experience growing fruit trees. Since 2011 with the threat of Boxwood Blight in the United States, Bennett has taken initiative to learn everything he could about the disease, traveling to Europe to see the disease first hand as well as meeting with researchers in the U.S. to learn about how to combat the disease here.
Through years of testing, and trialing over 150 cultivars, it was clear that the solution might be bigger than just Saunders Brothers. As Richard Branson once said, “If someone offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it later.” So as NewGen began to form, Bennett looked at this as an opportunity to share his passion for boxwood and the promising future still ahead of them, with the industry.
Lindsay inspects container boxwood plants at Saunders Brothers Nursery
Joining Bennett is Lindsay Day, the Marketing Coordinator for NewGen Boxwood. Lindsay brings 5 years of nursery experience with her to the team. She started with Saunders Brothers as an intern in 2013 and then joined full time as the assistant woody grower and propagation manager for the container nursery. After spending several years in the field propagating and working with the boxwood, when an opportunity arose where she could spend more time working with growers and customers teaching them about the promising future of boxwood, how could she say no? Since July of 2018, she has been part of the NewGen team connecting with our growers and finding new and creative ways to share boxwood knowledge with the industry with our website, mailing list, and social media.
Together we are looking ahead towards this new year as it gives us a chance to meet new growers and customers and share our passion about boxwood with you.