BLACK FOREST NURSERY \^ 



& GARDEN CENTER 



Building 



JJ-e came toward me holding a 



Careful 

 Stages 



.e came toward me holding a 

 week-old wood duck. "My wife saw 

 a hawk get its mother. She saw it 

 fly over the nursery — and then 

 these baby ducks ran right in front 

 of the counter. Some ran into the 

 road; some ran into the woods; 

 some ran into the machinery yard 

 next door. They were running all 

 over the place — she finally decided 

 she should catch some, but this is 

 the only one she got." 

 We were at the Garden Center 

 part of Bob Towle's Black Forest 

 Nursery & Garden Center on 

 Route Three in Boscawen. Before 

 Interstate 93 was built, 3 was the 

 main road north — to Franklin, 

 Laconia — out of Concord. It's 

 quieter now, but there's still plenty 

 of traffic and whenever customers 

 stopped. Woody (the wood duck) 

 went back into his box and I 

 looked around. 



The retail area is about a quarter 

 acre — 120 x 60 — defined by a 

 fence of 2x6's split in half and 

 painted red. Customers park on an 

 area of crushed rock in front and 

 enter through a 30x50 plywood- 

 roofed structure open on three 

 sides. Fertilizers and clay pots fill 

 shelves on the one wall. There 

 are bird baths and bark mulch and 

 peat moss for sale. 



The business was part-time until 



1986. 



Bob says the business began when 

 he and his wife Nancy bought a 

 house on a bare lot in Bosawen 

 ten years ago. When they went to 

 landscape the place, they were 

 amazed at the prices. "Hey, this is 

 going to cost us a fortune," Bob 

 thought, but he bought a few exfra 

 plants — mugo pine, taxus capitata 

 — and stuck them in the back 

 yard. He worked for the phone 

 company then and wasn't planning 

 to run a nursery full-time. But after 

 three years, a neighbor thought 

 the taxus looked pretty good and 

 asked if he could buy one. Then 

 someone else asked and someone 

 else. 



At first. Bob sold — at this same 

 location on Route 3 (which he 



leases)— from the back of a truck 

 from the end of April through mid- 

 June. He owned two small fields — 

 totalling an acre — on the Mer- 

 rimack in Boscawen and continued 

 to plant a few things each year — 

 fifty of this, fifty of that. (He now 

 owns or leases six acres in 

 Franklin as well.) 



After doing this for three years. 

 He put up the structure. When the 

 business was part-time, the roof 

 was tarp and the structure was 

 portable. It bolted together and 

 could be put up in a day. It went 

 up in early spring and came down 

 in October. Nancy ran the stand 

 during the day while Bob worked 

 a five-day week at the phone 

 company and in the fields after 

 work and on weekends. 

 In 1986, the phone company 

 announced plans to reduce the 

 Concord office. He could leave or 

 be transferred. By now, he was 

 working forty hours a week at the 

 nursery. He didn't want two full- 

 time jobs. He decided to run Black 

 Forest. After the decision was 

 made, he says he didn't do much 

 differently: "rather than plant fifty 

 of something, I'd plant four 

 hundred." 



So in 1989. after twenty years, he 

 left the phone company. For the 

 last two years, he's worked at 

 Black Forest full-time. 

 The tiny duck slept in his hand as 

 he talked. 



Bob grew up in Concord on his 

 grandfather's farm. It was a "typ- 

 ical old-time farm" — eighty rocky 

 acres with a couple cows, geese, 

 chickens, goats. There was a 

 vegetable garden and blackber- 

 ries, raspberries, strawberries. His 

 grandfather supplied berries to 



several stores in the area. Per- 

 haps the memory of this farm was 

 a factor in Bob's decision. 

 Today, the Black Forest Garden 

 Center is open seven days a week 

 from mid-April through October. 

 From Thanksgiving through the 

 Christmas season, it reopens 

 to sell Christmas trees and 

 decorations. 



It's a straight-forward operation. 

 Bob has a drip irrigation system in 

 his fields and an old B-275 diesel 

 tractor onto which he can hook a 

 loading bucket or a rototiller, but 

 a lot of the work is done by 

 hand. Planting is done in the 

 spring and fall; the plants are hand 

 dug. Spraying is minimal — he 

 doesn't spray until he needs to. 

 During the summer, his son 

 David — who graduated from high 

 school this June — and two high 

 school students, Nathan and Glenn 

 Palmer, work with him, filling 

 orders and keeping the fields in 

 shape. His fifteen-year-old daughter 

 Susie does the books. Nancy runs 

 the stand. 



Black Forest's specialties are rhod- 

 odendrons — the small-leaf PJM, 

 Olga, Ramapo; Exbury azaleas; 

 mugo pine; yews. Some of the 

 pine — among the first things he 

 planted — now have diameters of 6- 

 7 feet, which makes them ex- 

 cellent landscaping specimens. 

 There are other things: 20 vari- 

 eties of crab apple ("very hardy; a 

 pretty littie tree that grows well up 

 here"), 10 of lilac, 13 of juniper, 

 and 8 of maple, plus a wide range 

 of other trees and shrubs. Be- 

 cause Bob has planted some each 

 year, standard shrubs like burning 

 bush, forsythia, and spirea come in 

 a number of sizes. 



AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 1991 19 



