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MEMBER PROFILE 



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Spider Web Gardens 



RECONCILING PAST AND FUTURE 



The past is everywhere: the of- 

 fice is in a house built in 1845 

 — one of the two pre-Civil War 

 brick houses built in Tuf- 

 tonboro. But behind it, two 

 acres of white pine have been 

 cut, a hill will be leveled, and 

 new houses — for production — 

 built: the future is here as 

 well. The reconciliation of the 

 two — the cozy images custom- 

 ers often expect and the effi- 

 cient methods that keep books in 

 the black — can require careful, imagi- 

 native decisions. Bill Stockman, 

 owner of Spider Web Gardens, will 

 be making a few of these in the next 

 year or so. 



THE HISTORY of Spider Web began 

 with Roger ("Spider") Williams, a 

 UNH graduate in forestry and li- 

 censed land surveyor. He worked for 

 Brown Paper Company up in Gor- 

 ham, first scaling timber, then super- 

 vising a company tree plantation on 

 Lake Umbagog. In the thirties. Brown 

 advertised and sold individual seed- 

 lings to people (usually home-own- 

 ers) around the country. Williams ran 

 the operation. But the Depression 

 destroyed the market and he moved 

 to Tuftonboro — to a 100-acre farm 

 with a view of Gunstock to the west. 

 The hurricane of 1938 gave him 

 plenty of logging work to do — and 

 Tuftonboro seemed a good place to 

 raise and educate his growing family. 

 He put up two 30'xl5' sash houses 

 in 1938 (Sash houses were tradition- 

 ally built with a central walkway dug 

 into the ground, thus creating two 

 long beds at waist level; side walls 

 were low and the peaked roofs were 

 made of glass "sashes" — in this case. 



Spider Web, circa. 1 940 



ten 6'x3' sashes on either side — fit 

 into a grooved wooden frame. The 

 sash could slide up or down — or be 

 removed completely — to allow vent- 

 ing in hot weather); a 10'xl2' retail 

 shop was put up in 1939; in the 

 1940s, three standard 30x15' glass 

 houses as well as some cold frames 

 were added. 



Williams seems to have been open 

 to new ideas, in 1956, he put up a 

 48'xl5' single-poly house (no one 

 knew about using double poly back 

 then) — one of the first in the state. It 

 came in a "plastic greenhouse kit" — 

 which included the frame (basically, 

 electrical conduit piping), redwood 

 framing (redwood or cypress was 

 used because of its ability to resist 

 decay) for the ends, the plastic, and 

 wire (similar to the type used to re- 

 inforce cement) to support the plas- 

 tic between the frame supports. 



A new 30'x30' shop and lath house 

 was put up in 1968. 



Ownership skipped a generation — 

 Roger's daughter had married Frank 

 Stockman, a Massachusetts man who 

 became a farmer in Tufton-boro's 

 Canaan Valley area. Although he did 

 many things (there were chickens 



and here-fords, a small maple 

 sugar operation, and carpen- 

 try), he never had much inter- 

 est in his father-in-law's green- 

 house operation, but his son, 

 Bill, worked there during sum- 

 mers and after school and in 

 1973, Roger Williams' grandson 

 took over. 



Expansion continued: in 1977, 

 a 96'x32' double-poly Ohlmsen 

 house was built behind the 

 shop and lath house. In 1984, the 

 three glass houses were taken down 

 and two 48'x25' double-poly houses 

 put up; in 1985, two more were 

 added. The nursery and perennial ar- 

 eas expanded to approximately two 

 acres each. 



...CHRISTMAS IS PERHAPS less im- 

 portant than it used to be, although 

 sales of hand-made wreaths — both 

 balsam and partridge berry — con- 

 tinue to grow. But it stays important 

 as a punctuation mark: it marks the 

 end of the season that begins with 

 the arrival of the first summer resi- 

 dents in late May. 



But Spider Web's open year- 

 round. After the holidays, in the dis- 

 play house behind the shop, there 

 are primroses and a selection of foli- 

 age plants; Bill grows freesia in one 

 line of hangers (maybe 50-75 pots) 

 above the poinsettia crop to sell as 

 cut flowers in late January. He pots 

 up bulbs left over from fall and offers 

 "Dutch gardens." He buys Wedgewood 

 iris — two lots of 1000—250 of four 

 different bulb sizes. Planted on a 

 weekly schedule, this produces an- 

 other small — and enticing — cut flower 

 crop. These various items keep 

 people coming by. 



APRIL ■*■ MAY I 996 



