Beardslee Nursery was founded by Charles Henry Beardslee and Coletta Hurley Beardslee. The two met at Wayside Nursery where they both were employed. Charlie (Charles) was the field foreman while Coletta was the secretary. While working at Wayside, Charlie would purchase and cut flowers out of the field and haul them to the Cleveland market where he would sell them to local florists. That led to Charlie and Coletta's first business, Califloral. Charlie partnered with a man in California where he would ship cut flowers to be distributed to florists. Charlie and Coletta started Beardslee Nursery in 1947, renting a field on Oak Street in Painesville, Ohio. Two years later they purchased the company's current location on Blackmore Road in Perry, Ohio. The nursery specialized in field grown, bare root perennials. Charlie later rented a few former Storris and Harrison greenhouses from Bob Martin where he started to containerize groundcovers and liners. In 1970 Jack (John) Beardslee, Charlie's son began full time as second generation in the family business. Jack and Charlie were the founder of Golden Curls Willow Salix matsudana tortuosa 'Golden Curls'. They founded and marketed this new introduction to the trade. Today Golden Curls Willow is the most popular contorted willow used by florist worldwide. Together they introduced the common names to many other plants in the trade such as: Corkscrew willow, Artic Blue-leaf Willow, Pink French Pussy Willow, Java Red Weigelia, and Jade River Juniper. Nick Moretti, the founder of Moretti Nursery, and Charlie were innovators in many aspects of modern day nurseries. The two engineered their own automated mist systems for vegetative propagation. They also constructed some of the first modern day hoop houses in the county. They created a jig for bending pipe into a quonset hut shape, which was used to build many local nurseries.