Snuggled into the hillside, Brighton Nurseries has been providing the Island with plant life for several decades. Unfortunately, with a history surely as rich as the soil their vegetables flourish in, Eddie Simas, the current manager, can only trace it back to 1949, when his father, Mariano Furtado Simas, took a job with the nursery.

“It was owned by Roger Outerbridge and it used to be a lot of agriculture, with a lot of farms and stuff, too,” explains Mr. Simas. “My dad came down to work in the farms and he befriended one of Mr. Outerbridge’s two sons, Edward.”

The Simas family came to know Edward, as “Uncle Eddie”, who sadly, passed away in 1986, and left the business and property in a trust, of which the Simas brood were named as beneficiaries.

“I’m 40 years old and as long as I can remember Uncle Eddie used to come over every day, have supper with us, you know, take care of all the kids — three girls and two boys. We basically grew up right here on the property,” Mr. Simas recalls fondly.

“I’ve always been playing around here, and although I didn’t study horticulture, I came here in 1989 when I was in-between jobs, and I stayed. I started running the every day operations then as well.”

Back then, Mr. Simas explains, there was no shop, only a small booth that housed a telephone and somewhere close by “in the bushes” was a toilet. He also recalls their opening hours were seven to five, and they would close at noon for lunch. Within the first year all that changed.

“Basically, when it first opened, it was a nursery and landscape company but that stopped, although I’m not sure when. I would say things really started to change for the better in 1996, when we made some drastic changes with the way we took care of plants, and the design around the property and such.”

He continues: “We didn’t have a major cash investment to put up a new shop, which was discussed for quite a while. But then (Hurricane) Fabian came and we suffered a considerable amount of damage, which I thought would knock the business out completely. We came together and decided that we should invest in a new shop and everything else.”

Once this decision was made, the family decided to close their other business, Bermuda Florists, and put all their energy into the nursery. “And it’s worked out well. Everybody seems enthusiastic, we’ve had a lot of positive response about the new shop.”