Willoway buys Decker's Nursery, a century-old liner and grafting specialist

Willoway Nurseries has bought Decker's Nursery, the propagation and liner business in Groveport, Ohio, whose roots go back to 1921. Greenhouse Grower reported the deal on 14 October 2026, describing Willoway as one of the Midwest's leading wholesale nursery growers and number 34 on its 2026 Top 100 Growers list.

The terms were not disclosed, and no closing date has been given. What both companies have said is about continuity: customers should expect a seamless transition and continued access to products and service, and Decker's existing employees will play an important role in the combined company.

What Decker's brings

Decker's operates about 150 acres in Groveport, with container production areas, propagation greenhouses, stock blocks, and a grafting and liner production program. Greenhouse Grower describes its specialty as grafted conifers and specialty propagation, with relationships with several leading plant brands and licensing partners.

Its own history describes a business built around propagation from the start. Paul Offenberg founded it in 1921, and its early work covered propagation, grafting and liner production. It moved to the Groveport site in 1981 and took the name Decker's Nursery, Inc. It bought a 108-acre farm nearby in 1999, built a six-acre propagation and liner production facility as part of a construction program that began in 2004, and in 2017 finished the first stage of a greenhouse that doubled its liner growing area.

What the two companies say

Tom Demaline, Willoway's chief executive, called the deal a "tremendous opportunity for both organizations" and said combining the two would broaden the plant portfolio and increase production efficiency. Brian Decker, Decker's president, said the sale gives his staff a path to keep meeting customer expectations and to keep growing.

According to the report, the combined company will sell liners, grafted material, finished containers and woody ornamentals through one integrated sales and distribution network, and the deal is meant to expand production, add vertical integration, and serve customers regionally and nationally.

What it means for growers

Vertical integration in nursery production means bringing a stage of the crop inside one company that it used to buy from someone else, and propagation is the stage most often brought in, because it is where cost per plant is set and where a shortage starts. A finished program is only as firm as the liner order that fed it, often more than a season earlier.

The practical exposure sits with anyone whose production plan assumes a specific supplier for a specific liner, at a specific caliper or plug size, in a specific month. Consolidation does not usually remove plants from the market all at once. It changes who sets the allocation rules, and allocation rules get rewritten after ownership changes, not before.

Three things are worth doing regardless of how this particular deal shakes out:

Know your single points of failure. For each crop line, write down the supplier, the stage you buy in at, and what the substitute would be if that line were unavailable for one season. Most growers carry this in their heads for the top three crops and nowhere at all for the rest.

Get your confirmations in writing, with dates. A verbal availability promise from a sales rep survives an ownership change poorly. A dated order confirmation survives it better.

Keep your own propagation records good enough to argue from. Batch origin, source supplier, date received, losses at establishment and at acclimation. If you ever need to justify switching suppliers, or to price your own in-house propagation against a liner invoice, that record is the only evidence you will have. Whether you keep it in a notebook, a spreadsheet or in xPlant, the value is in the dates and the losses being written down at the time.

For buyers

If you buy liners from either company

Three questions worth asking your rep before spring orders are placed, phrased so the answer is useful: Is the crop list for next season unchanged from the one I ordered off last year? Are open-market customers being allocated on the same basis as internal production? And who is my contact after January? None of these require the company to discuss deal terms, and all three are answerable today if the answer is known.

The open question

Decker's own site still presents it as a propagator and supplier of liners and finished stock, and the two companies have said customers should keep access to products and service. What has not been said is how open-market liner and graft customers will be allocated against Willoway's own production once the two plan together, in a short year as well as a long one.

That is a question for each buyer's sales contact before spring orders are placed, and the answer is worth having in writing.