Drive east on Allendale Road past the stretch where Saddle River quiets into hedgerows and stone walls, and you will pass a low cluster of greenhouses that most residents have stopped noticing. For years, the property at 74 E Allendale Road looked like the kind of business a town outlives quietly: a koi and pond supply shop with peeling paint and ponds that had gone green. Online reviews from that period were not kind. One customer described the place as having fallen apart under management that, in their words, had "no idea how to effectively run a business."

What almost nobody driving past in those years realized is that they were looking at the birthplace of an entire American industry.

The farm that started it all

In 1895, a nurseryman named William Tricker established his water garden business on that same ground. He was not simply selling plants. Tricker is credited with hybridizing water lilies, introducing exotic varieties to American growers, and publishing some of the country's earliest water gardening catalogs, including a volume called The Standard Guide to Water Gardening. According to Fitz's Fish Ponds, which now operates the site, the Tricker family's greenhouses and nurseries supplied ornamental plants to prominent estates across northern New Jersey and New York in the decades that followed, a detail that connects this unassuming property to the same era of large-lot, formally landscaped living that still defines this part of Bergen County. By the 1990s the property had become known as Waterford Gardens, and it held that name and that reputation among pond enthusiasts for another generation.

Reputation, though, is not the same as upkeep. In recent years the site slid into disrepair. Ponds went overgrown, the greenhouse structure deteriorated, and the infrastructure that had once made this a destination for koi collectors and water gardeners started to fail. The property that had shaped an industry was, by most outward signs, closing in on itself.

What actually happened in 2024 and 2025

Here is the part that a resident who wrote the place off five years ago has likely missed. In the fall of 2024, Fitz's Fish Ponds, a New Jersey-based pond and koi company, purchased the property from the Meeks family and began a restoration of the Dutch-framed greenhouses and the lily tanks that had been left to decay. The company's stated intent was not to erase the site's identity but to build on it.

The public got its first look at the results on May 3 and 4, 2025, when Fitz's Fish Ponds held a two-day grand opening at the Allendale Road address. Saddle River Mayor Albert Kurpis attended and spoke at the event, calling the transformation a continuation of a legacy the community values deeply. The weekend included a fish health seminar led by the company's in-house aquatic veterinarian, Dr. Ben Rosenbloom, along with koi giveaways and aquascaping demonstrations that drew hundreds of visitors over the two days.

That alone would make a reasonable local news item. What makes it more than a one-time press event is what happened next.

Why one weekend became a pattern

On August 14, 2025, the property hosted more than 55 members of the International Waterlily & Water Gardening Society, a nonprofit that connects backyard hobbyists, commercial nurseries, botanical gardens, and researchers who work on water lily and lotus conservation. The group had already toured the company's Milford, New Jersey farm before traveling north to the Saddle River location, where store manager Tom Swinarsky and the local team walked them through the grounds. Several longtime members told the company they remembered visiting Waterford Gardens decades earlier and were struck by seeing the site preserved rather than paved over.

Then, this past spring, the company announced Plant Fest 2026, its first annual plant-focused event, held May 2 and 3, 2026, again at the Saddle River property. The event was framed explicitly as an homage to the property's horticultural history and was aimed at pond professionals, aquatic plant specialists, garden centers, and serious hobbyists, alongside the general public.

Line those three dates up and a pattern appears that a single renovation announcement would not reveal on its own.

A grand opening is marketing. A visit from an international horticultural society three months later, in the middle of the same summer, is validation from people who have no reason to be generous. A second annual event the following spring is a calendar. That is the difference between a business that got a fresh coat of paint and one that is actually rebuilding a role in its town.

What is actually there now

If you have not walked the grounds since before the sale, the inventory alone has expanded past what most people picture when they think "pond store." The property still carries hardy and tropical water lilies in both night and day blooming varieties, spanning white, pink, yellow, red, blue, and deep purple. Lotus plants range from dwarf varieties to large specimens in white, yellow, pink, and crimson. Alongside the plants sit koi tanks stocked through the company's Japan sourcing trips, plus the pumps, filters, and pond care equipment that made the original Waterford Gardens a stop for professional installers as much as backyard hobbyists.

None of this requires an appointment or an entry fee. It is a working retail nursery, open to browse the way any garden center is, which means the easiest way to see whether the restoration lives up to the history is to go look at it yourself.

Why this matters if you already live here

Saddle River residents do not need another reason to appreciate large lots and mature planting. What this property offers instead is a piece of continuity that predates the town's current character by more than a century. The same greenhouses that once shipped lilies to the region's grand estates are, right now, back in active use, and the same industry group that tracks water gardening history worldwide chose to walk this ground in 2025 as part of its official symposium.

That kind of detail does not show up on a real estate listing or a tourism site. It shows up when someone who has spent decades paying attention to this town takes the time to track down what actually happened to a property everyone assumed was fading. Local knowledge like this, the kind that requires knowing who to call and which local paper covered the ribbon cutting, is the same instinct that matters when you are trying to understand what a property in Saddle River is genuinely worth, not just what a portal says it might be.

If you are curious about what else has changed in town, or you want a conversation grounded in the same level of detail about your own property or a home you are watching, Sheryl Epstein-Romano welcomes the chance to talk. Request a confidential consultation whenever the timing is right for you.