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PROFILE: 



MiLLiCAN Nurseries 



Evolving Toward One-Stop Shopping 



I /\ I bout four miles north of 



/ % the Epsom traffic circle, 



_/ ^^ there's a spot on a quiet 



' M county road where a lot 



seems to be happening. You notice 

 first the small sign under the line 

 of maples, and then, beyond the 

 stone wall, beyond a lawn pat- 

 terned with beds, a house with 

 three large Daphne burkwoodii 

 'carol niackie' under the flower- 

 filled bow window. Below the lawn 

 is a holding area for 

 balled trees. Contain- 

 erized shrubs are be- 

 hind this — rows of 

 them on areas of 

 black plastic — and on 

 the slope above and' 

 behind the house are 

 work and storage 

 buildings and green- 

 houses connected to 

 them. 



John Bryant, the own- 

 er of Millican Nurs- 

 eries, showed me a- 

 round. 



The landscape beds 

 are new and are 

 meant to showcase 

 unusual and under 

 utilized plants. The plantings were 

 still incomplete in late-September, 

 but Korean Mountain Ash 

 (Sorbua ainifolia) — "a more inter- 

 esting leaf and bark than the fa- 

 miliar European type," Glossy 

 Abelia (Abelia grandiflora)- "a test 

 to see if it's hardy enough for this 

 area," and the Katsura tree 

 {Cercidiphyllum japoniicum) — its 

 leaves turning apricot — were in 

 place. Several compact (A twenty- 

 year-old plant is 3' high) Yaku 



18 THE PlANTSMAN 



Rhododendrons (Rhododendron 

 yakusimanum ) are included, and 

 the maroon-red leaves of Dwarf 

 European Cranberry {Viburnum 

 opulus 'nana') — "one of the finest 

 and most under-utilized dwarf 

 shrubs" — standout. Noteverything 

 was exotic — our native Checker- 

 berry (Gaultheria procunibens) is 

 being tried as a ground cover. The 

 gardens seemed full of possibilities. 



at the Antioch College graduate 

 school in Keene, began to think 

 that maybe he didn't want to spend 

 the rest of his life sitting behind a 

 desk. Always interested in grow- 

 ing things (He'd grown up on a 

 farm in Iowa and, after graduating 

 from college, had worked as an ex- 

 tension agent in the Central Afri- 

 can country of Malawi, teaching 

 cotton farmers how to use a back- 

 pack sprayer in the fight against 

 boll weevil), John 

 began looking at 

 nursery centers for 

 sale. He looked at 

 46 of them up and 

 down the east coast. 

 Millican's was the 

 47th. He saw it in 

 October of '86 and 

 bought it in Decem- 

 ber. 



Millican's began as a retirement 

 hobby. John Millican, the founder 

 of Pleasant View Gardens next 

 door (who founded Lexington Gar- 

 dens in Massachusetts before 

 moving to New Hampshire), start- 

 ed the wholesale nursery in 1981. 

 But by 1986, the business had 

 grown too large and he was looking 

 for a buyer. 



Around the same time, John 

 Bryant, then a financial manager 



He had no experi- 

 ence in running a 

 wholesale nursery, 

 but he, his wife 

 Julie ("She works 

 time-and-a-half; 

 I couldn't do it 

 without her.") and 

 young daughter 

 Nicole ("She helps 

 too.") seem to have figured things 

 out. The business has tripled since 

 John bought it. The demographics 

 have changed — today, 30% of his 

 business is with garden centers 

 and 70% with landscape designers; 

 when he started, the reverse was 

 true. Customers are from every 

 New England state but Rhode Is- 

 land. 



He has four year-round employees. 

 From the first of December to 



