Today, Martin Brooks of Martin Brooks Rare Plant Nursery in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, carries on the tradition of collecting beautiful tree specimens.  He has made a specialty of growing and selling mature specimens of rare and unusual trees - both deciduous and evergreen - but with emphasis on conifers.

A graduate of Delaware Valley College of Science and Agriculture, Brooks started his nursery in 1955 on 45 acres that had been used to grow tomatoes for Campbell Soup.  Brooks, now co-owns the business with his son, Lowell.  They have expanded to three farms, including an Arboretum.

Among the unusual aspects of the nursery is not only the enthusiastic and dynamic personality of the owner (usually sporting a tee-shirt and chomping a fat cigar), but the artistic way that much of the collection is displayed - free-form island beds with leaf color, texture, and form carefully taken into consideration to create a spectacular treescape that is so visually beautiful and inspiring that it is easy for visitors to understand the high cost of some of these specimens.

In the Arboretum, there are many different cultivars of Beech, Cypress and Pine.  Some of the plants are well over 100 years old and over 40 feet tall.  Even though most clients are on the east cost, plants are shipped all over the country as far as Texas and Colorado.

Martin Brooks has also been a contributing author of Dwarf Conifers, A Handbook on Low and Slow-Growing Evergreens, distributed by Brooklyn Botanical Gardens.