Greenery Hosts Summer Mee 



a By Bob Parker 



\M 



s you drive on Route 16 

 through Ossipee, you may 

 notice an oval wooden sign 

 saying "The Greenery" 

 standing in a carefully 

 pruned grove of pine and, in back of the 

 drive curving behind the trees, two recently 

 built wooden buildings - a large ^^ 

 storage shed and a cedar clap- 

 board salesroom with an invit- 

 ing front porch. 



Behind the buildings are 

 new greenhouses and piles of 

 loam and rows of potted nursery 

 stock. There's a lot going on. 

 It's surprising to see so much 

 happening in what seems a fairly 

 isolated place. 



"In 1987," manager Bruce 



Holmes says, "It was a twenty 



acre woodlot." Developer (and ^^ 

 former Red Sox owner) Buddy Leroux 

 began construction in late 1987. Holmes 

 started work in January 1988. Today it's 

 an impressive garden center and one that's 

 still expanding. 



The salesroom opens onto two 28x80 

 Nexus Teton houses connected to create an 

 additional 58x80 feet of retail space. The 

 sides are standard - eight mil polycarbon- 

 ate point-fastened on to the frame; the roof 

 is eight mil exolite - a rare instance of this 



material being used on an arched roof. The 



installation was technically tricky because 

 the exohte is placed in the glazing system 

 in a way that allows it remain flexible - it's 

 actually floating so that it can expand or 

 contract with the weather. So far, it's 

 worked fine. This greenhouse area is used 

 for retail business and for growing as 

 1^1^ well. Along with the pool 



surrounded by tropical floor 

 plants shipped up from 

 Florida are benches of ge- 

 raniums, begonias, impa- 

 tiens, and dusty miller. 



Just outside this com- 

 plex are two Criterion 

 houses (14x48 and 25x48) 

 and seven hoop houses (one 

 28x48, six 14x48) from Ed 

 Persons, the proprietor of 

 ^^^ Ledgewood Farms and a 



^^^ local greenhouse manufac- 



turer. These are filled with an assortment 

 of annuals and vegetables. The annuals 

 are standard - marigolds, snapdragons... 

 The uniqueness is in the number of varie- 

 ties — they carry "Rocket" snaps, for ex- 

 ample, and forty types of petunias, and 

 taller plants that can be grown for use as 

 cut flowers. 



Behind these is the newest addition to 

 the complex, a new propagation house. A 

 42x96 Rough Brothers lech-lite house, it 

 is an all aluminum structure with polycar- 



7/7 1987.Jt 



was a 



twenty 



acre 



woodlot...' 



GREENHOUSE AND NURSERY STOCK 



RETAIIBE 



bonate walls and an acrylic roof. It has 

 all-natural venting, with double runner 

 automatic roof vents and manual side 

 vents. It has ro-flo moveable benches 

 and under bench heating using an Alcoa 

 hot water system. Although still not 

 finished, it's filled with four inch gerani- 

 ums. 



Behind the greenhouse is about five 

 acres of potted nursery stock. The plants 

 are bought in spring, potted up, wintered 

 over - the evergreens are stored in the 

 hoop houses; the deciduous material is 

 laid under microfoam, then covered in 

 plastic - and sold the following year. 

 Holmes feels the extra year in the pots 

 allows the development of a solid root 

 system that insures the quality of the 

 product 



Obviously, with five acres of mate- 

 rial, there is a broad selection. This is 

 particularly true of the deciduous mate- 

 rial - there's an unusually wide variety of 

 flowering crabs, for example. And the 



