By Joli Harrington,
Record Correspondent
October 26, 1995
Business Section
A Publication of The York Daily Record

The owner of a local garden center took a close look at a locally manufactured mulch and didn't like what he found. John Shelley II, president of John Shelley's Garden Center & Nursery in Felton, said that twice customers brought in baggies of hardwood mulch that contained paper mill by-products and "were burning hot...had a stench and turned the plants yellow." The mulch manufacturer, P.H. Glatfelter Co., a paper mill in Spring Grove, makes special Glatco Mixture mulch, which is sold by one of Glatfelter's distributors, Mulch Products. Mulch Products sells the item by the trade name Nutri-Mulch. Shelley ran an advertisement in The Weekly Record in July that said "a local paper mill company even tries to sell their toxic by-products mixed-in with their cheap-quality, ground-up hardwood mulch." Dioxins and furans are unintentional by-products that are formed through a variety of chemical reactions and combustion processes, such as the production of chlorine bleach, bleached paper, herbicides and cleaning agents. Medical and municipal waste incinerators are the two biggest contributors of the chemicals to the environment. Pulp and paper mills are farther down on the list of offenders. After the ad appeared, Glatfelter attorney David Mandelbaum wrote a letter to John Shelley's Garden Center & Nursery demanding that Shelley stop printing the advertisement and threatening legal action. Shelley investigated Nutri-Mulch, and says he stands by his advertisement. In the October 10th Weekly Record, he ran another ad criticizing mulches using paper mill by-products. Glatfelter spokeswoman Pat Sweeney says the company is still reviewing the situation. In addition to carrying only Premium Dark Bark Mulch, we feature over 900 varieties of perennials, 200 varieties of annuals and herbs, over 100 varieties of ornamental grasses and bamboos, and more than 1600 cultivars of nursery stock, ranging from the common to the very rare, unusual and hard-to-find. Our Collector's Rare Plant Nursery has been supplying gardening enthusiasts for over seven years, and is a must for connoisseurs and serious collectors. Our Nursery Division can supply any request from the common to very rare and unusual material. And if you need a tree or shrub moved, we feature a special team capable of easily moving anything from 1-inch to 10-inch diameter trees. Call us for a free consultation and estimate. Our Warranty: is unmatched by anyone, anywhere, and is one (1) year from date of purchase if you install the plant material; it is five (5) years if we install the material. Call, write or email us for a complete copy of The Warranty. It's also online right here. Drop by our Website on The InterNet for a tour of the Garden Center & Nursery. It's located at www.gdnctr.com for those digerati among you out there who are connected on-line.]