As anyone who has ever opened a little , domicile - develop retail nursery can tell you , the economic reality for such is straight out of the veteran horse gambler ’s appeal : Lord , I go for I go bad even , I ask the money .
So it went as we open ourHidden Hill Nursery & Sculpture Garden19 days ago on a promising fender , happy ignorance and a prayer . History was not in my favour . My obligatory role as a newsprint editorialist had always been to make pollyannaish fun of capitalists , not become one .
Yet I had grown to have sex plants ; a scented dependence with no known cure – had I even been interested in one . I had eight acres of relatively open Southern Indiana land and an erstwhile barn , a modicum of plant noesis and a hankering for the nursery business .
Hidden Hill in fall
I had grow connections to the specialism wholesale nurseries and companies that catered to the needs of we the possessed ; tiny exotic hostas , glorious blooming bush , tears trees , stone owls and fountains from which water devolve in rhythmic curiosity .
My industrial plant enablers would be located in Tennessee , Ohio , Indiana , Illinois , West Virginia , North Carolina , the Pacific Northwest , and Wisconsin . They would supply me with the plant and owl and natural spring unavailable at the local box store , the very production for which my equally possessed customers would hunger . Could our newly stick parking batch contain the rush of customer ?
My business , as I became much too fond of say , was a avocation run amuck . It was mine . It would be free from those silly , too - constrain economic rule face by other small business . footling sentiment was given to supplying and demand , inventory dominance , balance sheets , insurance needs , digital cognition , method of accounting expertise , employee payroll , mandatory taxes , water bills , dearth , pestilence , plant death and one - twelvemonth - warrant customer end .
We were off ; our wash begun . Our land – which included our 1860s farmhouse – became our retail greenhouse and life plant museum . It was before long home to Persian iron-tree , ‘ Wolf Eyes ’ cornel , cry katsura , weeping ginkgo , weeping Alaskan cedar , balsam fir , Cedar of Lebanon , ‘ Summer Chocolate ’ mimosa , striped - bark maple and variegated zelkova . We sold and grew croton ‘ Alabamensis , ’ paperbark maple , perfumed bush ‘ Michael Lindsey , ’ sweetgum ‘ Slender Silhouette ’ and the lovely and historical Franklinia .
Our shrubs admit bright - jaundiced kerria , pallid - icteric weigela , regal beautyberry , red - berried deciduous holly , red-faced - and - yellow berried viburnum , purple lespedeza , pale - pink buttonbush Earth and feisty blank bottlebrush flowers .
Our recurrent selection offered Arum for the winter , moved on in spring to hard - to - find cultivars of hellebore , candytuft , pink , astilbe , heuchera , phlox , iris and paeony . Summer brought the more freaky cultivars ; daisy , coneflower , coreopsis , hardy hibiscus , rudbeckia , geranium , bee balm and allium – with Modern genus Echinacea cultivars showing up every 15 minute .
Hidden Hill in fall
Fall bring helenium , Japanese windflower , Korean mums , aster , solidago , balloon prime , caryopteris , sage , sedum and chelone . Then the Arum recur itself ; the plant life parade come full cycle . We were all about sport and whimsey and works noesis and fine , heavy - to - find plant life .
On we roll , year after year , but only open four day a hebdomad from April to October . Our lover basis grew . Our eight - acre arboretum flourished . We added pond , young garden , music events , horticultural class , whimsical nontextual matter , theatrical fine art and beautiful , lovingly created fine art .
Hidden Hill in fall
We created a full - sized room access to our hayfield ; jest with our customers if they did n’t use it they would vanish the follow Tuesday . People would come out to just wander our eight landed estate ; happy to be there . We were happy to have them .
Our financial advisor , a good and sensible man who would hide a cash register from his female parent if he recall it necessary , did understand and reconcile my passion . Yet he would p.a. peer at me over his desk and intimate a fiddling more fiscal circumspection , perhaps more reckon toward our onetime age needs , our true retreat , our bottom line .
Janet Hill , my wife of 56 year , my forever mate in spirit , our society bookkeeper and persevering gardener herself , would indulge me . We created “ Janet ’s Garden ” in her award , a rotary , quiet oasis in the eye of our larger madness with fountain , flowers , bench , orotund antique containers and a dangling , chickenhearted genus Brugmansia .
In diffuse summer evenings , after all the customers had left , we would ride around in a golf go-cart . I would admire what we had make . She would calculate for weeds . Her head also began to tilt toward a patio home with several thousand fewer plants to water .
The years roll on . We were able-bodied to levy terrific helper ; we all became a garden kinsperson . In the winters we would visit those concordant - laden gardens shows – CENTSandMANTS – to check out what was new in plants , spring and stone owls . In early outpouring I flick through 500 pounds of plant life catalogue .
I had no desire to get freehanded – just better . We looked ahead to March , the potting up of the young repeated cultivars , the a la mode in a ridiculous serial publication of ninebarks , the young dogwoods and redbud trees that would arrive bare - root and eager for their young liveliness .
All seemed well until it did n’t . We had our devoted regulars . But on our slower day I would degenerate by the local Lowes and see people lined up 10 deep at two cash register buying plants – most of them already in bloom . I had to admit Lowes ’s option looked pretty full – even if it seemed the help was 17 - years - sure-enough not really looking happy to be there .
We had created a 5,000 - follower Facebook bearing and a 2,500 - person email list as our promotion stuff , but it seemed the average age of our customers was about 86 . Are industrial plant geeks dying off ? Do millennials plant anything besides herbs and lettuce ?
We had slowly become a nursery better known than shopped . I kept running into people who would separate me “ I have always wanted to go to you berth ” but never showed up . I continually had to resist the impulse to force out back : “ Well what the hell is block off you ? ”
But it was never read with bitterness . I knew I was a lousy capitalist . I had always know my dreaming was not economically sustainable ; the box stores were opened seven days a hebdomad until 9 p.m. I want that other evening time sharing our land with my wife in a golf cart .
The bottom - line accuracy outed itself a few workweek ago as I went over our geezerhood of fiscal statements . It follow a 95 - degree September afternoon in which Janet and I had spend hr watering needy plants in dark charge plate pots .
We are both 75 class old . We were tired . It was time to go . The financials showed our gross income was greater five years ago than it was in 2018 . We talked it over , called it fall by the wayside and looked onward to more travel , more playfulness with friend and family , more selective use of our now sculpted land .
surely , some maintenance is still expect . But Janet could work on her quilts and drop more time with her church service ladies . I could finish writing my children ’s books , maybe finally spell that first bad novel . We were at total peace with our determination – Janet perhaps even closer to ecstatic .
Our closure announcement brought an spring on echt affection ; hundreds of people sent messages or came out to enjoin us how much Hidden Hill had entail to them , too . One former employee – underwrite all the bases – convey us a six - pack of beer and a bottle of champagne .
The horse cavalry - players supplication has it all wrong . We did much good than break even . We have our folk and a uprise list of friends . We have our computer memory . We have the satisfaction and thanks that come up with building something upright together . We have already win .
