MEMBER PROFILE 



Two hundred feet of pipe bring water from a well 

 outside their back door to the greenhouse range. The 

 well is the subject of legend: the man drilled for a 

 week; "I'll drill for one more morning," the man said; 

 toward noon, the drill suddenly 

 dropped sixty feet; water poured 

 out — he'd hit an underground lake. 

 "We could have 300 gallons a 

 minute," Wayne says; "the only thing 

 that stops us is the diameter of the 

 pipe. During the drought twenty 

 years ago, this well was to be used to 

 furnish water for this end of town. 

 So we have water — but in spring, we 

 need it." 



In New Hampshire, 



the easiest thing 



to do is to fill 



your life with work. 



To consciously choose 



not to do th 



A CLEAR IDEA of how they want 

 to live their lives has shaped the 

 business. Hard looks were taken at 

 what produced revenue. Areas which 

 seemed to produce only "work for 

 work's sake" were discarded — two 

 years ago, for example, they stopped 

 growing poinsettias. They now con- 

 centrate on spring material and, in 

 September, mums. 



You could say the season begins in the fall. Four- 

 teen thousand 4 1/2-inch geranium pots and 6500 

 806s (they'll fdl 500 more in the spring) are pre-filled 

 and stored. 



One house is opened in January for hangers and 

 pansies; 2500 bare-root perennials arrive in February 

 and are potted up in gallon containers, but March is 

 when the houses fill. They buy plugs, do little seeding 

 (mostly vining vegetables). 



"We're known for our geraniums — we grow 15,000: 

 4 1/2-, seven-, and ten-inch. We have one house of 

 red; one of mixed colors (pinks, hot pinks, salmons, 

 whites). But we're lacking a nice lavender. I used to 

 grow one called 'Precious Lavender:' it was truly lav- 

 ender. People loved it. ..people like color, will buy 

 whatever's in bloom. But they are always looking for 

 something different." 



It's less expensive to buy in unrooted cuttings 

 which they root in jiffy-7s on a heating table. 



Both geranium houses have rolling benches and 

 TAK trough watering. Beth and Wayne see this as one 

 of their best investments: "This has been great — we've 

 saved hours of watering time and have grown a good, 

 more uniform crop." 



Most of the big labor-saving devices seem too ex- 

 pensive ("A pot filler would be nice, but it would take 

 years to get a reasonable payback"), but small innova- 



requires its own 



forms of discipline. 



They've needed to 



make the operation 



cost efficient and use 



their own energies wisely. 



tions have made a difference. Shelving — a Person 

 idea — along the sides of the greenhouses the width of 

 a flat, angle braces supporting conduit piping three 

 feet off the ground, create room for 200 more flats 

 per house. ("By doing this, we've ba- 

 sically picked up the growing space 

 of another full house.") 



Hangers are grown in a sepa- 

 rate house that's kept on the warm 

 side. Eight hundred New 



Guineas. ..and 2200 fuchsia, scavola, 

 helichrysum, bacopa...."we try to 

 have a little of everything." This 

 year's new items include variegated 

 petunias and hanging snapdragons. 



The houses are full by the first 

 week in April — this is the crop. One 

 other shipment of plugs arrives in 

 May. The material fills one house 

 and is used for late sales. 



The business opens at the end 

 of April (8:30-6, seven days a week) 

 and closes on the fourth of July. It 

 reopens for mum sales the last week 

 of August and stays open through 

 September. 

 A white wooden gazebo at the side of the road is 

 filled with color. (The gazebo is actually a sandbox for 

 small children: the entrance faces into the garden cen- 

 ter; there's clean sand on the floor and plenty of pails 

 and small shovels.) Benches of perennials are put out 

 on a small asphalt area beside it; in the shop, plant 

 displays surround wrought-iron lawn furniture where 

 customers can sit and read books and magazines filled 

 with gardening ideas. 



A short, wide, poly tunnel connects the shop to the 

 retail house. Although this house is used for growing, 

 once the sales season begins, the long broad bench in 

 the center is kept filled with material from the other 

 houses. "The season's short, but we try to offer a wide 

 range of everything — herbs, vegetables, bedding plants. 

 And lots of hangers." 



Mum cuttings arrive the last week of May; planted 

 directly into 5000 two-gallon containers and 250 

 bushel baskets. They grow twenty varieties, use Florel 

 to retard growth. Florel works well (although on one 

 type, the flowers are inside the new growth): basically, 

 there's no hand-pinching. Plants are brought to the 

 retail area; it's entirely self-serve. There have never 

 been problems. 



They originally hoped for a 50/50 wholesale/retail 

 mix, but it's about 70% wholesale. There are informal 

 general orders before the season starts and a seven- 



