Here's the February Under an Acre feature with Jack Kaskel from Red Buffalo Nursery.

Naturally Native Pam Buddy-D’Ambrosio

People who have dreams of saving the world put their spin on how they’ll get it accomplished, whether with super powers or colorful costumes. Jack Kaskel’s vision begins with the restoration of wetlands, prairies, savannas and woodlands of Illinois and Wisconsin. He doesn’t need a cape to do the job—just the cooperation of Mother Nature and like-minded neighbors. Jack and his wife, Maurine, own Red Buffalo Nursery in Hebron, Illinois, a small village six miles from the Wisconsin border. With an entrepreneur for a father, Jack was destined to strike out on his own and leave a computer-programming job behind. In the early 1990s, he volunteered to restore savannas and prairies in the Chicago area. A stewardship at a grove and marsh conservation area led to graduate work in geology and environmental studies and a volunteer position on a natural areas restoration project. In 2000, Jack started Red Buffalo Nursery—part-time for five years and full-time since 2005. The name of the business came from a friend who read PrairyErth (A Deep Map): An Epic History of the Tallgrass Prairie Country by William Least Heat-Moon. “Red buffalo” is a Native American term used for prairie fires due to the noise and color. Jack and Maurine purchased 20 acres on which they have their home and the nursery. They restored 18 acres and use it as a seed source for the nursery. A remnant sedge meadow occupies a portion of the property. There are 5,000 sq. ft. under cover. Jack says, “We grow grasses, sedges, flowering plants, some shrubs and very few trees; 90% of what we sell we grow from seed.” From their property, Jack gets wetland seeds from plants such as the cardinal flower, great blue lobelia, buttonbush, elderberry and bulrush; and prairie seeds from little and big bluestem grass, compass plant and gray-headed coneflower. The surplus seed is sold through Prairie Moon Nursery in Winona, Minnesota. The woodland seeds for Red Buffalo Nursery are supplied by local growers and bare root stock is purchased from growers in Wisconsin. The area, for Jack, is broken down by ecosystems rather than by hardiness zones: “fen versus bog; closest to Lake Michigan versus farther inland. We consider the soil and the proximity to the lake more than we talk about zone,” he says. There are fewer than five employees, but during the growing season they add one more person to the staff. Jack’s wife helps out with sales at the nursery and at farmers markets where they bring 20-25 species out of the 300 they grow. Jack says, “Generally, Maurine helps with guidance when I’m smart enough to ask for it and sometimes when I’m not.” On the weekends in spring and fall, customers can come unannounced to the nursery; at other times, Jack sees people by appointment. They sell wholesale and retail. Most of the customers, an equal mix of female to male, come from neighboring counties, southeast Wisconsin and Chicago, a 90-minute drive. Jack says, “People make special trips to come here, we’re not on a main road.” He says he sees “a wide gamut of customers: young people with their parents because they’re studying natural areas and restoration, or older people dragging kids with them.” The nursery has a website and Jack has done general advertising, but feels that it doesn’t entice the people he needs to attract. He advertises through the Wild Ones, a non-profit native landscaping organization of which he is a member. Most advertisement for the nursery comes by word of mouth or by being at a site. Jack says, “When we’re out working at public parks, people see us and ask questions or say ‘come to my house.’ We do like to be out in the public to educate people.” Two-thirds of the nursery’s business is the restoration of natural areas. “Our business deals more with natural areas and trying to figure out how to take the next step in restoring them,” Jack says. One of his favorite projects for its progression is Ryders Woods in Woodstock, Illinois. “It’s an oak savanna with a lot of buckthorn, honeysuckle and aggressive native species; we cleared it up and it has progressed nicely,” he says. In a year, Jack has six to 12 restoration projects in parks and on private properties, along with the ongoing maintenance of previous projects. He says of the restoration work—90% is government or non-profit-related. “The bible in our area is Plants of the Chicago Region by Swink & Wilhelm,” says Jack. A few of his favorite plants are Jacob’s ladder, trillium and trout lily, of which “a colony around a park bench looks like a society of ancient Druids. When I started with restoration in the mid-80s, I enjoyed being out with people and in the sun, but on hikes, there were so many different plants, how would I learn all of them? After 18 months I knew some plants. Now I know 2-3 dozen plants,” he says with a laugh. “This is a lot more interesting than computer programming,” says Jack. “Sitting at the computer terminal in a big office building, I had little interaction with people and was more isolated than I feel out in the prairie studying or herbiciding invasive species—you notice more isolation in a building full of people.” Jack’s tips for native growers: • Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants by Douglas W. Tallamy—“It’s an excellent intro into how native plants support insects and wildlife versus non-natives that do that to a much lesser extent.” • “When starting to incorporate native plants into your sales stock, use non-hybrid plants or seed from local genotypes: just as ornamental plants do best in a specific zone, native plants do best in a specific environment, Oregon natives thrive in Illinois, and Illinois natives don’t support California wildlife. Start with a varied selection of about a dozen species from a few different basic environments, for the Midwest: prairie, wetland (also known as “rain garden” plants), and deciduous woods. Be sure to include grasses and sedges in every sale; they are the best for keeping annual weeds at bay, for carbon sequestration, and for fuel for prescribed burns.” GT Pam Buddy-D’Ambrosio is a freelance writer in New Rochelle, New York. Woodstock Farmers Market shot this video of Jack:

Welcome!

Since June 2010, I've had the privilege to interview nursery growers in North America for Grower Talks magazine. My monthly article, Under an Acre, features wholesale and retail growers.

For the January 2012 issue of Grower Talks, I had the pleasure of visiting with Andrew Brodtman from Twombly Nursery in Monroe, Connecticut. Andrew is on the right and Barry is on the left in this photo.

Neighborly Nursery Pam Buddy-D’Ambrosio

The 12 acres that make up Twombly Nursery in Monroe, Connecticut, are surrounded by homes. While “good fences make good neighbors,” owners Andrew Brodtman and Barry Bonin believe in more than being just a good neighbor. For instance, when an elderly neighbor and her dog walked to the nursery to ask Andrew the name of a repairman, he made an introductory phone call for her. Sharing property lines has other advantages—the neighbors get their driveways plowed in the winter and their yards planted in the spring. Twombly Nursery began as a tree service business in the late 1960s. It developed into a nursery where Andrew worked upon completion of his Landscape Architecture degree. He did landscape design and installation for more than 10 years before he and Barry, another employee, bought the business in the mid-2000s. They own 3.5 acres, lease the rest of the property, and are looking into leasing additional land. The retail area, administrative offices and four-season garden cover 4 acres, while the outdoor-only growing area is on 3 acres. Hoop houses protect the broad-leafed evergreens and other delicate plants from winter wind damage. Andrew and Barry grow Spirea, Japanese maples and dwarf conifers. They grow and sell specimens of larger sizes, such as 20- to 30-ft. trees. They harvest trees at a 4-in. caliper or above. Andrew says, “It’s too easy to find 2-in. caliper trees, so it doesn’t make sense for us to grow them.” He says nurseries in the area don’t do mature trees due to lack of buyers, proper equipment or land. They buy in bareroot stock and can sell 200 Miss Kim lilacs during a season—good for the gardener who is unwilling to feed the teeming deer population in Connecticut. Andrew and Barry grow herbs and some vegetables for the hobbyists and impulse buyers. They’ve introduced a rare Twombly Red Sentinel. It’s a red leaf Japanese maple that grows 18 ft. high and 8 ft. wide, with an upright habit, and is good for smaller gardens. If they can’t find a particular specimen or they’re selling 100 to 200 of a specific plant, they’ll grow them. Andrew takes two weeks per year, one in the summer and one in the winter, to tag. “Is that a vacation?” he asks. Barry travels, also, to Oregon, Ohio and the southern states to tag material. “Seventy percent of the things that come in, we see first,” says Andrew. Oregon is a destination because, “what takes five years to grow there, takes seven years to grow in the Northeast,” says Andrew. They choose wisely, looking for the best material, the rarest and the most unusual that their customers can’t get anywhere else. Andrew and Barry are careful about what they choose for their location. “We can’t do Zones 7 or 8; we used to be Zone 6A, but after the last few winters we’re 5B,”says Andrew. “We never close,” says Andrew, but they do shut down for the winter, which gives Andrew and Barry time to make repairs on the equipment, paint, review past jobs, and place spring orders. “There’s always work to do,” he adds. The staff shifts in size from 20 to 25 during the busy season, down to five or six in the winter. Some of the employees have accrued dozens of years at the nursery—longevity is good for business as customers ask for the employees by name and will stand for no substitutions. “What we can’t do financially for our people, we do by treating them like they’re family; and as long as we’re able, we’ll contribute to their health insurance and 401(k)s,” says Andrew. Designers come from Manhattan, Greenwich, Connecticut and Massachusetts for the material they can’t find anywhere else. Andrew and Barry offer masonry services, work on others’ landscape designs, plus implement their own creations—about 50 a year. A very diverse clientele, says Andrew, can buy hundreds of plants, one plant or 10 evergreens. The landscape designer or gardener who wants a cherry tree with a serpentine trunk, an 18-ft. holly or plantings for rooftop gardens and courtyards in Manhattan knows to come to Twombly Nursery. The retail customer base is more female than male, says Andrew. Every week, two women walk the nursery, sometimes they buy, and sometimes they don’t. Andrew calls them the “Thursday Ladies.” Andrew and Barry take care not only of their neighbors, but the wildlife, too. A customer can’t have that Paper Bark Maple he purchased until the nested birds leave for another location. Money-saving ideas and tips for other growers: “Buy in more bareroot material.” “We’d love to be more energy efficient—we’d love to have the money to get a windmill.” “We’re not outsourcing. We do our own in-house advertising and email marketing to 5,000 email customers. We have a pre-sale event for email customers two weeks before the sale is open to the public.” “Our wives work in the business in marketing, advertising and bookkeeping. There is flexibility in having family work for us.” “We keep a reliable customer base. We have a lot of high-end buyers, but we make the people who aren’t high-end feel like they are. We give them the personal touch; we are a ‘mom-and-pop’ operation.” GT Pam Buddy-D’Ambrosio is a freelance writer in New Rochelle, New York.