MEMBER PROFILE 



MERRYMEETING GARDEN CENTER 



A Good Spot; a Promising Venture 



ELMER SMITH was a legend 

 For thirty years — from the 

 time he moved up from 

 Massachusetts, Smitty ran a farm 

 stand near the corner of Route 1 1 

 and Depot Road, in New Durham. 

 He sold the crops he raised on the 

 ten acres there and on other fields 

 he farmed nearby. 



In 1985, he sold the business 

 After two years as an organic farm, 

 it was sold to a heavy equipment 

 repair company which removed the 

 top soil near the building and re- 

 placed it with gravel. After that 

 company left, the place remained 

 vacant 



WHILE ALL THIS was going on, Les 

 Turner was going by the old farm 

 stand every day on his drive to 

 work. Dean of Academic Affairs at 

 the Technical College in Laconia, 

 he was tiring of administration and 

 beginning to think about doing 

 something different. He began as- 

 sessing the property's potential. 

 Nothing had been put into it for 

 forty years: there was no water, no 

 heat, no electricity, but the stubby 

 'L'-shaped red-clapboard struc- 

 ture — a salesroom and a garage — 

 was sound. The land — now grown 

 up to weeds and brush — didn't ac- 

 tually front Route II: the strip 

 along that road — owned by the 

 same person — would probably be 

 sold for strip mall development 

 someday But the ten acres in- 

 cluded an acre and a half of ma- 

 ture blueberry bushes and a small 

 pond around which Smitty had 

 been experimenting with cranberry 

 production. 



Les had never run a garden cen- 

 ter. But having made a career in 

 education, formal courses didn't in- 

 timidate him and he signed up for 

 a couple in floriculture at the 



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Thompson School in Durham. He 

 asked a lot of questions. He was 

 still interested. He decided to 

 lease the property. 



The first projects were basic: to 

 heat the sales area, he installed 

 two mobile home heaters — each 

 70,000 btus — facing in opposite di- 

 rections; he had a well dug, put in 

 a flush toilet; he rebuilt the re- 

 maining greenhouse — a 20x24 wood 

 frame and glass house attached to 

 the back side of the salesroom. 



In April, 1994, without fanfare, 

 Merrymeeting Garden Center 

 opened for business, offering 

 plants for Easter. 



By Mother's Day, he'd put up 

 what he calls the "high hoop 

 house" — basically a 17x96 hoop 

 house from Ed Person (Ledgewood 

 Farms, Moultonboro), on a two-foot 

 high base — perpendicular to Depot 

 Road. He bought in bedding plants 

 and hanging baskets and sold 

 those in the front half while raising 

 a crop of tomatoes (mostly "well- 

 known outdoor types") in back 



IT'S A GOOD SPOT— Depot Road is 

 the main road to Merrymeeting 

 Lake for its large summer commu- 

 nity. At Thompson School, it was 

 suggested that he capitalize on the 

 location — to focus on the retail 

 side of things rather than the grow- 

 ing. This year, he had Ed Person 

 custom-design a second house — a 

 28x40 display house which was 

 built parallel to the road onto the 

 end of the sales area. Aluminum 

 frame and poly and twelve feet to 

 the ridge line, it's a spacious struc- 

 ture with generous aisles and 

 simple wooden benches — but the 

 important feature is that the side 

 facing Depot Road is glass, creating 

 a display window that catches the 

 attention of people driving by. 



This arrangement of structures 

 creates a large 'U' with the open 

 end facing the street. This 'U' is 

 filled with display gardens. With 

 the exception of a 10x90 holding 

 bed alongside the hoop house, 

 most of the beds are gently 

 mounded, with no barriers to hold 

 the soil in place ("basically, it's 

 soil I brought from out back and 

 put on top of the gravel"), and 

 planted with perennials and small 

 trees. The path to the main door 

 goes through an arbor; a small lath 

 house (with a fiberglass covering 

 under which people can still do 

 potting when it rains) is another fo- 

 cal point 



There's a practical side to all 

 this — Route 1 I is higher than the 

 land around it and the beds act as 

 berms, diverting water coming from 

 the highway. Not a serious prob- 

 lem, but "it's nice to have less 

 mud in the spring — and less salt." 



What sells? "Whatever's in blos- 

 som. When delphiniums are in 

 flower, I sell delphiniums." 



BY lULY FIRST, the tomatoes 

 planted in the hoop house (black 

 plastic, drip irrigation) in mid-April 

 are producing and the emphasis 

 shifts toward the vegetables. 



This year he's growing a full 

 house — greenhouse as well as out- 

 door types; but they're growing too 

 well — the feed soaked up by the 

 dirt floor in the retail section com- 

 bined with the compost he added 

 this year ("I should have had a soil 

 test taken") has produced tall 

 plants — but not a lot of fruit. 



He grows more tomatoes, along 

 with other vegetables (peppers like 

 competition, he says: planted close 

 together and without much feed, 

 they're heavy producers), on two 

 acres outside, using black plastic 



The Plantsman 



