4 
Founding the Andorra Nurseries 
Schuylkill; here, over sixty years ago, Richard Wistar chose a 
high wooded hill as the site for a country home. The broad expanse 
of fertile meadows and the steep slopes of rocky hillsides, mounting 
to the hilltop overlooking 
the surrounding country for 
miles, gave a fancied re¬ 
semblance to the sunny 
little country in the Pyre¬ 
nees and so Mr. Wistar 
called the estate “Andorra.” 
Mr. Wistar was a lover 
of plants and a patron of 
horticulture, as were other 
members of this illustrious 
family, for we find Wistaria, 
one of the earliest plant introductions brought back from the 
Orient by far-sailing old sea-captains, was so named after Caspar 
Wistar, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Although 
Mr. Wistar never realized his dream of the house on the hill-top of 
Andorra, there are evidences of his well-laid plans on every hand 
in the many plants and trees which he planted before even starting 
on his house; and today the grove or park, planted with saplings 
sixty years ago, is shaded by stately magnolia trees, towering 
high to the tops of the old beeches and firs, and which in the 
spring are a riot of waxy white flowers. 
Occupying the lands once owned by Mr. Wistar, the Andorra 
Nurseries were started some thirty years ago and, from a modest 
A glimpse oj San Julian de Loria, Andorra 
ANDORRA NURSERIES 
