Nanticoke Gardens doesn’t discriminate when it comes to the plants it sells.
Looking for geraniums? The store has them. Petunias? Check. And since May 2022, this Endicott, New York-based garden center is also growing more than two dozen different cannabis cultivars.
“We grow plants, period,” says Pete Shafer, co-owner of Nanticoke Gardens. “If a plant is legal, if it allows us to have a business and serve our customers, then we’re interested in growing it.”
A garden store from its inception in 1973, Nanticoke first added hemp, then wholesale cannabis cultivation to its portfolio during the decade and a half since Shafer purchased it back in 2011. The company was one of New York’s first licensed cultivators in 2022 and now has products in more than 500 of the state’s roughly 700 dispensaries.
Shafer and his younger brother and co-owner, Chip Shafer, employ nearly 50 people across Nanticoke’s cannabis cultivation and production facilities, and New York’s Office of Cannabis Management recently approved the family business to double its growing space to 25,000 square feet.
Inside of Nanticoke Gardens' cannabis greenhouse facility in Endicott, N.Y.
From Beer to Bud
Pete Shafer cut his teeth in the beer distribution industry, just a three-hour drive southeast in New York City. He burned out after a decade in the Big Apple and was ready to leave the hustle and bustle of city life for good, he says. He just needed an opportunity that made sense.
In 2011, the stars aligned when a small garden center in Shafer’s hometown went up for sale. Chip was a Nanticoke Gardens employee at the time, working as the production manager and assistant grower for 12 years, and advised Pete that the store’s owner was looking to retire. Pete knew instantly he was being called back home to Endicott.
“In the back of my mind, I was like, ‘How cool would it be if cannabis became legal someday?’” he says. “I thought it’d be great if this was an opportunity to work our way toward that.”
The Shafers took over by the end of that year, keeping the store’s half dozen employees on board. Business was smooth, but the garden center had an incredibly short season. Endicott’s humid continental climate, characterized by blustery autumns, freezing winters and hot summers, means garden-variety plants only grow for a few months of the year.
Nanticoke typically opened in April each year with its facilities packed to the rafters with countless different plants. It’d typically close for the season by the end of June, or as soon as they sold out. When he took over, Shafer envisioned more for the company.
Nanticoke's Blue Dream cannabis cultivar grown in Endicott, N.Y.
Highs and Lows With Hemp, Then Cannabis
In 2016, Nanticoke Gardens became one of New York’s first hemp cultivators after partnering with Binghamton University, which had applied for one of the state’s research licenses. Under the partnership, Nanticoke produced seeds and plants for the university. By 2017, New York recognized hemp as an agricultural crop, and Nanticoke sold hemp seeds and starter plants to farmers.
In anticipation of the market potential, the Shafers built a 20,000-square-foot greenhouse to grow hemp year-round, making it the garden’s most profitable crop in just a matter of months. Heating bills piled up during the fall and winter in the mixed-light greenhouse, but Nanticoke’s extra costs were well worth the effort as the CBD industry flourished.
Nanticoke's pre-rolls processed in Endicott, N.Y.
“It was a bit of a short ride because the CBD market pretty much crashed within a few years,” he says, referring to late 2019 and early 2020’s plummeting prices for CBD and hemp biomass that resulted from an oversupply. “By then, there was momentum for marijuana with so many other states already legalizing it. We thought we’d eventually have a good chance in New York.”
His cannabis dreams came true during the pandemic, when the New York Legislature passed adult-use legislation in March 2021. Similar to when the plant store started growing hemp, Nanticoke in May 2022 earned one of the state’s first cannabis cultivation licenses and wasted no time building its new business. That’s despite a lack of concrete state regulations or guidelines until the first dispensaries opened eight months later.
“We filled our 20,000 square feet all with cannabis plants, not knowing exactly what that market was going to look like,” Shafer says. “We knew we weren’t going to be able to retail. But in our naive minds, we were picturing selling big bags of weed to someone else.”
The Shafers were in for a shock when state authorities finally hammered out the rules toward the end of that year. Among the most jarring was a limit on Nanticoke’s growing space to 12,500 square feet under the company’s licensing tier, meaning the Shafers couldn’t use their entire facility at the time.
On top of that, New York’s strict quality control laws for cannabis forced cultivators and producers to test products in their final packaged form before they could hit dispensary shelves. In other words, a five-pack of pre-rolls and an eighth ounce of flower has to be tested separately, even if their contents came from the same crop's batch.
While most other cannabis-legal states allow for large-batch testing, the extra hurdles in New York contribute to higher retail prices but also more accurately labeled products that help ensure consumer safety.
Nanticoke responded to the limit in growing space by renting out its surplus greenhouse area to other licensed cultivators. After the company’s recent license approval to double its growing capacity, Nanticoke is building additional greenhouse space for its own crops and plans to keep renting out canopy space to its existing tenants.
“The evolution of the guidelines and policies would make some strong men break down and cry,” Shafer says. “It was tough, and it just kept changing with more regulations and complications.”
Nanticoke's quarter-ounce jars of Durban Poison flower processed in Endicott, N.Y.
Beating the Stigma
Opening 53 years ago, Nanticoke Gardens is part of an “old-school” industry in which a company grows its own plants and sells them directly to consumers. Many gardens now work exclusively in the wholesale business due to competition from big-box retailers like Walmart, Lowe’s and Home Depot that specialize in retail.
Shafer says handling both growing and selling plants gives Nanticoke more personal relationships with Endicott locals. So, when he decided to make the leap into hemp, then cannabis, he had some explaining to do.
Nanticoke's Permafrost cultivar grown in Endicott, N.Y.
“If baskets do well or if vegetable plants do well, then I’m going to grow those. It just happens to be that cannabis is an opportunity for us right now.”
One of the most intriguing challenges was marketing the cannabis arm of the company, which, due to state regulations, must be a separate business from the garden center. Nanticoke’s garden plants now grow on the same property as its retail store, but the cannabis greenhouse is 3 miles away in a repurposed and expanded facility that no longer houses the company’s garden plants. Ditto for the production facility, which is another couple of miles north of the greenhouse.
Shafer and his marketing team spent weeks pondering a name to distinguish their cannabis brand from the garden center but ultimately returned to the company’s roots for the final verdict. “Nanticoke Gardens” would continue to grow and sell regular plants, while the cannabis brand would simply go by “Nanticoke.”
“We went round and round with flashy names, with what to brand our product,” he says. “We finally came full circle and spun off our namesake. It’s worked because it’s a lot easier to tell our story.”
And while cannabis industry sales as a whole declined nationwide in 2025, according to the latest U.S. Cannabis Jobs Report from Vangst and Whitney Economics, New York’s fledgling market is still enjoying significant growth. Per Headset, total sales reached $155 million in May 2026, marking a 15.4% year-over-year jump and a 4.3% increase from April.
“Market share is definitely splintering as more businesses open,” Shafer says. “But at a macro level, the industry is very healthy and doing very well.”
