14012817684 little compton rhode island11/24/2023 If we’re good at our jobs, we’re seeding gardens with better ideas and sentiment.įew specialty nurseries breed and name their plants – most are happy to focus on propagating species and existing, if not uncommon varieties. We don’t need more factory produced “Kleenex” (disposables), which lack a genuine connection to the bigger picture/landscape. Sometimes she would ask me to meet her in front a painting-she would say, something like, “see the way the Sargent used this yellow flush to active the dancer (pointing to El Jaleo)? Use the plants in the courtyard to do the same.” Both when I was at the Gardner and now at issima, I aim to grow the kinds of exciting, multi-faceted plants I want to use in my own designs. I remember Museum Director, Anne Hawley coming into the garden every morning to evaluate our work. Aside the opportunity to build a scholarly roadmap/ toolkit, it’s probably worth noting that an art museum is a pretty great setting to experiment with garden design-something I believe any great nursery person should be fluent in. Hopefully I’ve brought an informed perspective-knowing I don’t even know what I don’t know. What perspective do you hope to bring to an operation selling plants? Taylor, you have plenty of experiences with private and public horticulture (notably growing and staging plants at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum). In many ways it was an autodidact’s dream and the perfect launching pad, as in many ways it’s the model that I continue to employ. I was allowed full run to determine acquisitions, and was regularly able to go off plant shopping for plants to bring back and propagate from. We were truly a nursery, doing the majority of the propagation in house, and all of the growing – we never bought in finished plants. Sean’s wasn’t as much a garden center as a retail nursery with a display garden – the model of a destination nursery was a large part of what made the horticultural revival of the 90s so exciting, as there were many. What lessons did you take away from your garden center job that proved applicable to issima? A specialty nursery tends to play to the owners’ idiosyncrasies. A large garden center is fixated on wringing out every available dollar from every square foot. Love how you present a false dilemma to two retired philosophers-how can we answer if it’s not a question?Įd, you had the experience of working for a large garden center before breaking out to set up this nursery. It’s easy to get lost for a hour or two among the growing benches and the stock plot is a way to see some of the plants at their best. If you do visit, don’t be surprised by a visit from the neighbor’s friendly donkey or the alpacas who grin amusingly over the fence. Open on select days, the nursery is an oasis in coastal New England that has seen a decline in specialty nurseries. They even have introduced several perennials, including Sanguisorba ‘Drama Queen’ which I grow in my garden. Ed and his partner in business Taylor Johnston run this ‘nano-nursery’ in Little Compton, Rhode Island focused on unusual, rare and uncommon herbaceous perennials and shrubs. If there was an unofficial motto for issima ( ), it would be “the smallest nursery in the smallest state” in co-proprietor Ed Bowen’s wry words.
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