McSHERRY'S NURSERY: 



COLOR EVERYWHERE 



CENTER CONWAY 

 in mid-April is quiet. 

 Winter is ending — 

 the lawns and open 

 fields are bare, but in 

 the woods there is 

 still snow. 

 But it's not completely quiet. At 

 a cluster of structures near a spot on 

 302 where a broad bend of the Saco 

 touches the road, trailer-loads of bark 

 mulch and nursery stock are being 

 unloaded. 



The display islands in front are 

 still empty, but branches in the store 

 window are hung with Easter eggs 

 and the buds on a newly-anived 

 shipment of rhododendrons promise 

 more color to come. Another trailer- 

 truck pulls up. The phone rings. 

 McSherry's is getting ready for spring. 



Before the McSherry family 

 owned it, the property belonged to 

 Western Maine Nurseries. A small 

 wooden building by the road was 

 used for retail sales and the rest of the 

 nine acres was planted in evergreen 

 stock. 



Then, thirty years ago, Tom 

 .McSherry — having graduated from 

 The Bartlett School of Tree Surgery, 

 then having worked as an arborist for 

 twenty years — decided to start his 

 own business and bought the land 

 from them. 



Tom — who's the father of Gail, 

 the present owner — put up a bigger 

 building, put the little sales building 

 behind it (where it's still being used 

 for storing tools), and opened Mc- 

 Sherry's Nursery and Tree Service. 



At the time, Gail was selling 

 antiques and her father thought it 

 would make good sense to combine 

 the two businesses at the same spot. 

 Gail agreed. But she found she was 

 getting more and more interested in 

 plants. She finally stopped selling 

 antiques, took courses at the UNH 

 Thompson school, and took over the 

 business herself. Her parents have 

 retired and now her daughter Paige 

 is working here — Paige works with 

 the annuals in summer and sells 

 Christmas trees and wreaths in the 

 month of December. 



The business is seasonal, open 

 from mid-April to the end of 

 October — plus that one month of 

 Christmas sales. "Plant-wise, 

 nothing much happens up here in 

 winter," Gail says, "but in summer 

 we're busy every mmute." Along 

 with Gail and her daughter, during 

 the season McSherry's employs four 

 other people: Kirsren Russell, who 

 works with perennials ("and she's 

 our gardener"); Bob Pond, who's 

 been with McSherrv's over twenty 

 years ("He does evervthing"); MarV 

 Moulton, who works with Bob, and 

 Stuart Robertson, who takes care c: 

 customers on weekends. 



This solid crew helps give Mc- 

 Sherry's its positive and outgoing 

 personality, but changes made over 

 the last five years have contributed 

 as well. Working with a consultanr, 

 Gail has made a lot of them. One of 

 the first was inside the shop: "The 

 space was dark and made you feel 

 closed in," Gail said, so the unfin- 

 ished wood walls were painted pas- 

 tels; the ceiling, white. "The light, 

 bright colors really opened it up." 



THE NEXT STEP was to move the 

 sales area for the nursery. "It used to 

 be out back. We brought it up to the 

 street, so people could see what we 

 were doing." The driveway is a 

 shallow loop along which bags of soil 

 amendments are piled for convenient 

 loading. On either side of the 

 driveway, display islands (areas of 

 bark mulch edged with pressure 

 treated wood) were built to display 

 containerized shrubs. Three octa- 

 gonal islands are used for roses — one 

 of McSherry's specialties. Gail sells 

 hardy varieties that can grow in the 

 north country. Her tips — 'Tlant the 

 crown below soil level, mulch really 

 well in winter, and don't cut them 

 back until spring (there'll always be 

 some winter kill; if you cut back in 

 fall, there may not be any living 

 plant left)." 



Display gardens were developed 

 ("in summer we're full of color") 

 behind the rail fences along the edge 

 of the road. When Western's sales 

 building was moved, the foundation 

 plantings stayed and annuals were 

 planted inside them. Today a path 



j une/J ULY 1992 21 



