Tree of life: The Morano Group celebrates 70 years of putting ‘family’ in ‘family business’

Tree of life: The Morano Group celebrates 70 years of putting ‘family’ in ‘family business’

It’s no accident that the Morano Group’s logo is a tree.  Trees anchor any garden, just as the author of the Book of Genesis made the fateful Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil central to the Garden of Eden. Trees are also the symbol of family, and thus of life itself.

We at Morano are not only a third-generation, family-owned business; we are a family of businesses, including Morano Landscape in Mamaroneck, Ridgeway Garden Center in White Plains and Weaver Gardens in Larchmont, with additional offices in Greenwich, Manhattan and West Palm Beach, Florida.

It all began 70 years ago with patriarch Angelo Morano, who immigrated to the United States from Calabria in southern Italy. The business continues today with grandson Val Morano Sagliocco, who has not only expanded it but taken it green with electric, lithium-battery operated leaf blowers and mowers to cut down on noise pollution, a move that began in March of this year.

René-Antoine Houasse’s “Dispute Between Minerva (Athena) and Poseidon Over the Naming of Athens” (1689), oil on canvas, Palace of Versailles. Athena’s gift to the city was the versatile olive tree, pictured far right, and she became its patroness.

Don’t do it: Jan Brueghal the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens’ “The Garden of Eden With the Fall of Man” (circa 1615, oil on panel, Mauritshuis, The Hague) depicts Adam and Eve about to make a fateful decision as a wary peaceable kingdom looks on.

But the tree figures in the Morano Group in another way. It was the dream of Angelo and Val to plant olive trees on the family estate in Calabria. In 2002, the year after Angelo died, daughter Rosina, Val’s mother, planted more than 2,500 olive trees on 35 unused acres. The olive tree has long been a varied source of sustenance. (Indeed, the gift of such a tree was the reason the people of ancient Athens chose the goddess Athena as their patroness and namesake.) The Morano olive trees are the source of the lightly nutty Oliveto Morano oil used at Val’s Lago Ristorante & Wine Bar in West Harrison.

A tree grows and spreads. The Morano tree has grown and spread not only to embrace new environmental challenges and business opportunities but its burgeoning clientele.

You, our clients, are our family, too, and we take this opportunity to wish you the best of the holiday season.

May your new year be evergreen.