MEMBER PROFILE 



Gillyflower Glen 

 Evolving, Involved 



lid 



The NeWest Mall Shopping Plaza in New Ipswich . . . 

 a couple restaurants — Irena's (family-style) and 

 The New Ipswich House of Pizza, Belletete's 

 True Value Hardware, Ultimate Sensations (nails, ear 

 piercing, skin care), Hoppy's ("Groceries, Meat, 

 Beer"), and Gillyflower Glen 

 Florist and Gifts: maybe not an 

 ideal mix, but a stable one that 

 seems to work. 



Gillyflower (an old English 

 word for dianthus) Glen was 

 started by John Isham (who de- 

 scribes himself as "also old and 

 English"), former administrator 

 of the town of Peterborough, as 

 a retirement activity. 



The business has two seg- 

 ments. The first. The Gardens at 

 Gillyflower Glen, began as a 

 hobby at his home in 

 Peterborough long before his re- 

 tirement in 1995. In his enthusi- 

 asm, he grew far more than he 

 could use. After giving as mi 

 friends, he began to sell. 



The lot is small — only 1 1/3 acre, and most of it is 

 in production. Gardens around the house have been 

 torn up several times to make room for more plants. 

 Shade plants are now his specialty. Within that cat- 

 egory, he's narrowed his choices to four — hosta, lilies, 

 columbine, and astilbe. 



Because the business is small and the only labor is 

 his own, he can work on a small scale, buying a few 

 plants, seeing how well they grow, then dividing them 

 and selling those not needed for stock. 



Even in starting up a small operation, much work 

 had to be done. A half acre of pine and maple was 

 cut and stumped. Because the soil is clay, raised beds 

 seemed needed. He used equal parts of sand, manure, 

 and compost, which he rototilled and let sit a year. 

 Initially, boards held the soil in place; now the wood 

 has washed away and the beds stabilized. 



"No one really specializes in hosta here," he says, 

 but many growers (King Farm, Cavacchio, Van 

 Berkum, etc.) carry selections, each sightly different 

 than the others. He's begun collecting — his own selec- 

 tion numbers "around fifty" and ranges from the four- 

 foot tall Krossa Regal' to the smaller dwarf types. 



Each fall, he quarters each mature hosta with two 



JMeWest seems somewhat 



out-of-the-way for a florist shop, 



but in the tri-town, or Mascenic, area, 



there's no single population center. . . , 



There had never been a florist shop 



in the area and people didn't think 



about buying flowers because 



the opportunity had never been there. 



So part of the job was getting people 



used to a new idea. 



cuts of a sharp spade. The plants remain in the 

 ground over winter and individual sections are trans- 

 planted or potted and sold in the spring. (John sees 

 this method as less stressful to the plants.) 



The other collections are small (he has only twenty 

 types of lilies, half a dozen of 

 astilbe, and maybe seven of col- 

 umbine — including the native, 

 which seeded in naturally), but 

 growing. (Of course, having sim- 

 plified by choosing four special- 

 ties, he then decided to grow 

 ground covers as well. Bad man- 

 agement? In a larger operation, 

 perhaps; here it's an indication of 

 genuine enthusiasm.) 



He feeds once in springtime (a 

 granular 10-10-10) and maybe a liq- 

 uid feed (nothing special) in mid- 

 summer if the plants seem to need 

 it. He waters with a hose. 



He's open Sundays and Mon- 

 days and evenings. Advertising 

 has always been through word-of-mouth, although he 

 now has an annual open house that is advertized in 

 local papers. 



THE SECOND ASPECT of the business is Gilly- 

 flower Glen Florist and Gifts, at the plaza outside the 

 center of New Ipswich. 



John had thought about having a small shop and 

 selling plants from his garden there, so he attended 

 some SCORE-sponsored training sessions (designing a 

 business plan — that sort of thing), then "pretty much 

 followed what they said." 



The choice of the site was pragmatic. Peterborough 

 already had both florists and garden centers and he 

 didn't want to go into competition with friends; he 

 looked in the Hillsboro and Dublin areas, but 

 "Hillsboro also already had two shops and Dubliners 

 tend to go to Peterborough," so he chose the tri-town 

 area of Greenville, Mason, and New Ipswich. 



NeWest seems somewhat out-of-the-way for a florist 

 shop, but in the tri-town, or Mascenic, area 

 ("Mascenic" is not native American — it's simply letters 

 from the names of the three towns arranged in a pro- 

 nounceable form), there's no single population center. 



He rented commercial space that had, for fifteen 

 years, housed a branch of the Peterborough Savings 



FEBRUARY / MARCH 1999 



