The Rhode Island horticultural industry is made up of multi-generation family businesses whose hard work helped to showcase Rhode Island growers as some of the world’s pre-eminent propagators and growers of trees and shrubs. 

In 1919, the Rhode Island Nurserymen’s Association (RINA) was formed by a small group of Rhode Island retail and wholesale nurserymen. As the organization grew in the early 1960s, the RINA board of directors expanded the membership to include the landscape industry and sod farms that were switching out of potato production. 

With the ever-increasing number of firms relating to the environmental horticultural industry joining the association, the Board of Directors decided, in 1990, to change the association name to the Rhode Island Nursery and Landscape Association (RINLA). Today, the organization is the leading professional trade association that serves the horticultural, agricultural and landscape industry and promotes environmental stewardship. 

Our members, known as “green industry,” include nurseries, landscape contractors, arborists, irrigation specialists, masons, garden centers, turf farms, landscape architects, landscape designers, vegetable growers, cut flower growers and many others. RINLA is also dedicated to promoting the highest professional standards (licenses, certification, insurance, etc.) and also provides our members many ways to further develop their professional skills and network with other green industry professionals.

RINLA members play a vital and integral role in a sustainable Rhode Island and will continue to explore new territory in sustainable agriculture and livable communities.