Ironclad refers to a durable group of Rhododendrons that have proven reliably hardy in Northeastern Ohio. My favorite among the ironclads is R. Nova Zembla. I have my reasons. First, the color in medium shade is a deep passionate remarkable red. No orange tones. Not overly purple or pink. Personally, I think it would make a great lipstick color for women of distinction. Within the broad blossoms are dark subtle speckled throats and long lashes that beg closer inspection. I like to enjoy the blossoms in a bowl of water on the kitchen table. Second, this is a tough performer with deep evergreen foliage that remained unmolested even through our recent -30 degree winters. Finally, it blooms at the perfect time for me to enjoy!
Rhododendron Nova Zembla
You may have noticed that nursery folks escape to their own self-enforced witness protection program each year from late-March through mid-May. We resurface for a breath of air and an afternoon off around Memorial Day. The great thing about Nova Zembla is that it is always waiting for me when I arrive! We enjoy such an engaging and amicable community of landscape plants here in Northeast Ohio that it’s easy to flit about from flower to flower, overcome with this bounty and the buyer’s paradox of so much beauty, without forming long-lasting relationships with a single performer. Nova Zembla has been my BFF in a neglected yard for over thirty-five years. Each Memorial Day we reconnect and rekindle our friendship.
I started with a lanky, one-sided leftover from our garden center and planted it in dry sandy shade beneath a limbed-up spruce. All these years later it remains awkward, lanky, rising to a six foot ridge line with color and healthy foliage on all sides. Meantime, the spruce is dying a slow death as the brown bottom limbs ascend toward the apex. I never water (at home). I might have thrown a handful of Osmocote under the Rhody in some years. My wife calls the yard a killing zone. And yet my Nova Zembla prospers and dominates the space.
The variety was developed by Koster & Sons in Boskoop, Holland, and introduced in 1902. They crossed R. ‘Parsons Grandiflorum’ with an unnamed red, which sounds intriguing and vaguely scandalous to me.
Rhododendron Nova Zembla
The name translates as ‘new land’ in some languages. There is a series of islands high up in the Northern Seas, between Russia and Finland, known as Novaya Zemlya. The islands are mostly glacier and tundra. I doubt there are any Rhododendrons there. The Soviet Union used the islands for nuclear testing for almost fifty years, including the Tsar Bomba in 1961, largest weapon ever detonated. In February, 2019, herds of polar bears left the ice and invaded what was left of the islands. Some blame global warming. I suspect the bears were out for Tsar Bomba retribution.
Rhododendron Haaga; reliably hardy in North Perry, Ohio; Blooms with R. ‘Nova Zembla; developed in Helsinki.
I had a nursery friend who told me years ago that they only achieved about 10% successful rooting on their R. Nova Zemblas. The fact that they kept sticking them year after year offers a keen insight into the nursery thought process. I toured Roemer Nursery, Madison, Ohio, back in 2009 when the founder, Gied Stroombeek, was still around. His propagator was sticking Rhody cuttings that day. She gathered tip cuttings from the stock plants, trimmed each leaf judiciously to reduce transpiration and save space in the rooting bench, then dipped the moistened cuttings in rooting powder. I imagine it was a strong formulation of IBA with about 98% talc. She let them air-dry on the worktable until the powder adhered like dried toothpaste. Then she stuck them in the raised bench of an ancient greenhouse using a long indexed board to keep the rows straight. The rooting mix was mostly fresh pine bark, similar to a modern container mix. They looked like orderly soldiers arrayed row on row. With all this labor required of a highly trained professional from the ever-diminishing ranks of the local propagator ‘guild’, perhaps it is not surprising that many Rhododendrons are produced via tissue culture these days.
My wife’s favorite Rhododendron is ‘Edith Bosley’, a classy deep purple, the best purple Rhody in our estimation. For Mother’s day last year I purchased one for her from Klyn Nurseries. Through no fault of theirs, it perished within a month. (Did I mention I never water the yard?) Knowing her affinity for ‘Edith’, someone purchased for her a small ‘Edith Bosley’at a Big Box store in Mentor (located on land previously cultivated by Paul Bosley, Sr. and his wife, Edith!). But the promising bud yielded not purple, but deep majestic red! I was overjoyed! Let the buyer beware of horticultural serendipity.
(There is an entertaining article by Paul Bosley, Sr., regarding how he met his wife, Edith, and how they selected the nursery property on Mentor Avenue: The Bicentennial Edition Lake County History, Lake County Historical Society, 1976, pages 296-300, ‘Stop 68’.)
Witch hazels arrive early to garden parties in the Midwest, too early for some gardeners! Put on your winter coat and muck-boots to catch their colorful shout-out, mostly in early March, before the forsythias and hellebores! Although their early-spring blooms may be inconvenient for the faint of heart, they are delightful, fragrant, fascinating and well worth the trip outside!
How does a winter flowering shrub become pollinated? Actually, this occurs through the efforts of a ‘shivering moth’ that makes its rounds on cold nights. Earnest palpitations raise the moth’s internal temperature by as much as fifty degrees!
We are lucky to have a plantsman and wholesale nurseryman in Madison, Ohio, who makes it his business to collect and grow these under-appreciated shrubs: Tim Brotzman, Brotzman’s Nursery. Tim invited us to his nursery on a cold muddy Saturday in early March 2019, a perfect day to witness this private pageant! At the beginning of the long spruce-draped drive leading to the house that Tim built with his father, we find two bright yellow sentinels, Hamamaelis xintermedia palida. My wife and I were unescorted at this point and thankful for the labels! Each blossom on a Witch hazel is remarkable, only an inch or two wide, tiny colorful streamers exploding like party-poppers from tight centers all along the woody stems. Flowers may accompany dried fruit capsules that popped the seeds up to thirty feet in the previous fall. Tim says horticulture makes us better observers. As we catch up with him and hike through the orderly fields, he introduces each new plant, witch hazels and other friends, as treasured personal companions, with stories of their idiosyncrasies, temperament and original collection. For an hour, we were fortunate to be the ‘shivering moths’ visiting each plant in the collection.
Tim Brotzman. (photo by Mark Gilson)
Tim began his horticultural education working for his father, Charlie, a renowned nurseryman, story-teller and poet. After earning a degree from The Ohio State University in the early 1970s during the golden age of OSU Horticulture, Tim studied in England and Germany. He worked with David Leitch, local world-famous hybridizer of rhododendrons, as well as distinguished plantsman at The Holden Arboretum and local nurseries. Somewhere along the way, he traveled to Tibet on a plant-gathering expedition. Among the legendary International Plant Propagators Association, Tim is recognized as a ‘fellow’ for his years of attendance and service. The best thing about Tim is that for those with any connection to horticulture, he celebrates and extracts any knowledge and experience, no matter how limited! Talking with Tim, whether a plantsman, local grower or master gardener, you are elevated to a revered place in a fundamentally important industry and pastime.
The fall-blooming Hamamaelis virginiana is native to the Eastern and Southern US. Find it in shady woods on your autumn hikes, sometimes clinging to the side of woodland ravines. Native Americans utilized it for treatment of various inflammations and tumors. A derivative is used in Witchazel’s Oil. Hamamelis Mollis is more common in the nursery trade than the native fall-blooming form, although that is changing with renewed interest in native plants. H. Mollis was crossed with H. japonica to form many cultivars of H. xintermedia common to the trade. Red-flowering varieties were selected by early developers, including Hamamelis xintermedia ‘Diane, ‘Livea’, and ‘Jelena’, all of which Tim pointed out. ‘Arnold’s Promise,’ brilliant yellow, remains one of the popular cultivars (although Tim discounts any connection to the body builder and former governor of California!). Other varieties include ‘Glowing Embers,’ ‘Strawberries and Cream,’ and ‘Orange Peel.’ There are also vernalis types, including H. v. ‘Kohankie Red.’
H. x. Arnold’s Promise outside a nursery office in Madison. (Photo by OSU-Extension Lake.)
Tim shares detailed origination data on all his plants, including one he collected from within an armored gunnery live-fire range in Louisiana (Tim’s friend, Tony Debevc, Debonne Vineyards, flew him there in his own plane). As we walk among the rows, Tim trims flowering branches with his well-used Felco clippers for us to enjoy in our home. We comment on the odors of each, from cinnamon to apple to a pleasing but obscure vernal scent. As so many plants in our gardens are bred these days for color and other characteristics, it’s great to put our noses to work again!
Recent cold winters were hard on the Witch Hazels. One year the local temperatures dropped to 30 below zero, followed by a wet year, followed by a March with a precipitous drop to minus eight degrees. Some of the casualties remain evident in the field. Others returned to life amidst a bundle of low stems. Each cultivar seems to require its own regimen, some seed-grown, most grafted. We wonder how all this hard-won knowledge will be transferred on. Tim is no longer a young man, despite his customary energy, wit and positive engagement. Documentation of our horticultural experiences remains a challenge for our entire industry!
Other gardening treasures abound along the edges of the Witch hazel trials…columnar white pine…a beech seedling from China that has proven unsusceptible, so far, to the mysterious ‘beech blight’… unusual pines…dogwoods…many one-of-a-kind specimens.
Tim Brotzman gathering Witch Hazel stems for Kris Gilson (photo by Mark Gilson)
As a businessman, Tim is consumed with inventory matters, how to record, promote and price the myriad wholesale stock in his fields. We value the time he took from his busy day to provide these precious moments…always too few in the day-to-day chaos of our chosen fields…for horticultural observation, appreciation and instruction!
One day the leaves are gone.
And the wind makes dying sounds
within the humbled branches.
It is time.
The slow earth yields its precious heat.
In a cold hush before the sun
our garden perishes within the arms
of a stranger. Vain, inexorable, patient,
He chalks his victims
in a pale and savage dust.
Marigolds and sweet alyssum
wither uncherished beneath the brittle weeds
that overtook our nobler intentions
in warmer months, when we were young
and soon distracted.
Rain, snow, frozen soil, the way
the blackbirds undulate across drab
sheets of grey sky in curving
arrows toward the recent past…
so many things go unremembered.
Traveling along Rt 20 from the east, on the north ridge, before leaving Ashtabula County, the first local nursery encountered was Girard’s, founded in 1946 on a sandy bluff next to the road and famous for azalea hybridizing. At the eastern edge of Lake County the intersection with County Line Road has always been a busy nursery hub. Hortons Nursery operated there for many years followed by other owners. The Ridge Manor Farm at that site is now owned by the Petitti Group. Sabo’s Woodside Nursery is across the street. Nearby in Geneva was the Joe Romeo Labor Camp where employers could find Puerto Rican workers in the 1950s and 1960s.
In Madison, Brotzman’s Nursery got their start on a small plot near Rt 20 and Hubbard Road. Later they moved to a busy nursery neighborhood closer to Lake Erie encompassing Chapel Road, Bennett Road and Dock Road. The broad areas of ‘Stafford loamy fine sand’ intermixed with Elnora soils in this level area are well-suited to nursery crops when drained and irrigated. Other nurseries who call this area home include Arcola Creek Nursery, Zupscan Nursery, Agora Gardens (a reincarnation of Mentor Rose Growers, now owned by Petitti’s), Toledo Nursery, Yokie Nursery and Byrnes Nursery. Near Haines Road on Rt 20 is an unmarked field where we remember Horton’s workers loading trucks long into the night.
Orchards, farms and nurseries shared busy North Ridge Road in Perry including Resthaven AzaleaFarm, Secor’s nursery (1924), Martin’s Nursery (1934), Molnars (1920) and West’s Orchards. Where Middle Ridge Road intersects with North Ridge is the former Champion Farm, site of the first nursery association Summer Field Day in 1972, when the farm was managed by a young Donnie Crawford. Nearby is Red Mill Farm founded by Alex Zebhazy, ‘The Hungarian Philosopher’, and now operated by Herman Losely and Son. (Zebhazy donated over $100,000 to help get the Lake County Historical Society up and running.) With 1000 acres in Lake and Ashtabula Counties, centered on Shepard Road in Perry between the Middle Ridge and South Ridge, Loselys is currently the largest nursery on the east side of Cleveland.
Horse-drawn cultivator at Loselys.
Bob Lyons, nursery icon and founder of Sunleaf Nursery (located on North Ridge Road in Madison, now operated by the Petitti Group), grew up next door to Gilson Gardens in the 1960s and raised old fashioned bleeding hearts in the muck soil below the ridge. The Square brothers, Lester and James, operated on North Ridge near the Painesville line even after construction of Rt 2 cut their nursery in half. Their old rose barn still maintains quiet witness on busy Rt 20.
Painesville, founded in 1805, was an ‘oak opening’ at the time of original European settlement, an open space in the endless woodlands extending from the east coast. Native American fire regime may have been the cause, or a patch of inhospitable glacial till. But the areas around Painesville became the epicenter of this burgeoning industry.
Storrs & Harrison Nursery began on North Ridge Road a few miles east of downtown Painesville. During their meteoric rise in the late 1800s, they developed an unbroken array of fields and facilities on both sides of Rt 20 extending all the way to Lake Erie, much of it on excellent ‘Conneaut Silt loam’. Workers arrived by rail at the ‘Nursery Stop’, children were educated at the ‘Nursery School’ (which still remains as Hale Road School), and immigrants lived nearby in tents in ‘The Italian Woods’ up until 1939. Their clock announced the hours for the nursery and nearby community; their thermometer provided official temperatures, including a dip to 33 below in the winter of 1872/73; and the Painesville Post Office was expanded to regional capacity to accommodate all the nursery commerce.
Myriad ‘lunch box nurseries’ of all sizes sprung up nearby between North Ridge Road and Madison Avenue, including LPBrick’s Nursery, Joe Sabo & Son (later Katila’s), Julius Kohankie Nursery (1913), Merrill’s Nursery, Nichol’s Nursery, Normans,Penn-Ohio Nursery (owned by the Kraynak’s of Sharon PA) Tankovich, Alva Smith’s Nursery, Riggs Nursery and Mike Sebian’s. Nearby on Fairport Nursery Road were the Collavechio’s and more of the Squares. (Giuseppe Scacciavillani immigrated from Italy to Fairport in the 1890s and Americanized his last name to Square.) Others began on Hale Road and Lane Road, including R.F.Hacker Nursery, Paul Otto Nursery (founded in 1937 but liquidated for four years in 1941 when Paul was drafted to serve in the front lines of Europe) and George Otto Nursery.
One of five brothers who entered the local industry, Henry Kohankie founded his nursery in 1903 on North Ridge Road in Painesville. Across many fields in local communities, the nursery expanded to over 1000 acres rendering it one of the largest in America. Soil diversity enabled a tremendous variety of crops for which they became famous. At his home in the ‘Cherry Hill’ area off Mentor Avenue (across from Hellriegel’s Restaurant), Henry Jr. established many rare specimen plants for display. Some of the Kohankie fields near Middle Ridge are operated to this day by Herman Losely & Son (1951). Kohankies was sold to Horton Nursery of Mentor in 1954 rendering Hortons the largest nursery in Ohio and fourth-largest in the country.
The North Ridge splits in two as it passes through Painesville, one portion continuing along Mentor Avenue and another defining the busy nursery strip of Jackson Street. The 60-acre farm belonging to JJ Harrison’s father in 1858 was on Jackson Street. Others over the years included Elmdorfs (1904), Youdath’s (1920), Joseph Martin Nursery, Kovacs Nursery, Waldorf Nursery, Ed Sabo Nursery and Lou Bartish Nursery.
Cole Nursery began in 1881 on Rt 20 in Painesville, east of the Fairgrounds and railroad tracks (later the site of Colony Lumber). The WWII years were difficult for local nurseries and Coles converted their 600-acre-operation to food production. After the war they moved to Jackson Street encompassing 238 acres on both sides of the road from Nye Road to Heisley Road. This farm was almost entirely comprised of ‘Tyner loamy sand’ on gentle slopes, excellent for nursery production when accompanied by summer irrigation. The Cole residence was located at Jackson and Heisley, as was the specialty rose nursery of Joe Kern (1941) who promoted ‘Roses of Antiquity.’
Nearby was the world-famous juggernaut Wayside Gardens, formed in 1920 by Elmer Schultz and JJ Grullemans. In 1937 Joseph Havel, salvaged an ornamental greenhouse from the George Ball estate near Gordon Park and relocated it to Havel’s Greenhouse on Mentor Avenue, where it stands today. Michael Horvath, Hungarian immigrant and former City Forester of Cleveland responsible for the Rockefeller and Wade Gardens, founded Mentor Avenue Nursery in 1921 to focus on hybrid roses. Bosley Rose Nursery began on five acres in 1928. Donewell Nursery was founded on Mentor Avenue by Joseph Kallay in 1917. Later he would secure one of the early plant patents for Blaze Rose. (There were six Kallay Brothers and they published a catalog in Hungarian for 44 years!) Other rose specialists preferred the heavier soils a short ways to the south including Wyant’s Rose Nursery (1919) and Jim Schroeder’s Mentor Rose Growers (1956).
Nothing lasts forever.
Gilson Gardens was founded on North Ridge Road in Perry in 1947, located on the site of Werner Nursery. Werner’s was founded by a Polish Immigrant around 1920. He grew lilies and perennials and one of his customers was Storrs & Harrison Nursery, a couple miles away. Werner liked to travel down Blackmore Road after work, less than a mile, and cool off in Lake Erie. One summer day he was swimming there with employees and, tragically, drowned. The nursery was abandoned for a number of years until it was purchased by Ted and Kathy Gilson and Ted’s parents, Edward and Mildred. The parents moved from South Euclid into the nursery residence while Ted and Kathy purchased a home nearby on Hale Road. They sold fruit in the roadside stand for a few years, then perennials and later nursery stock. Ted had worked for Youdath’s Nursery after returning from WW II; later he worked at Mentor Products as a machinist. Ed worked for many years at Bailey Meter Company on Cleveland’s East Side. They continued their day jobs for many years after purchasing the nursery, sometimes preparing cuttings in the morning before heading off for work, sticking them in the greenhouse after they returned in the evening. Along with nearby friends on Blackmore Road, Nicki Moretti, Moretti’s Nursery, and Charlie Beardslee, Beardslee Nursery, they specialized in ivy, pachysandra and other ground covers. (Logan Monroe, Kingwood Nursery, Madison, was another local ground cover specialist.)
The three nurserymen were personal friends and worked together to satisfy large orders. My brothers and I came along in the 1950s, along with boys in the Moretti and Beardslee families. We grew up thinking it normal that all our friends were nursery brats and that nurseries should dominate our local communities. Perry was paradise for kids back then with hundreds of acres of overgrown nursery lands where we regularly escaped all parental supervision. Our Boy Scout Troop 71 was filled with Dugans (3), Secors(2), Gilsons(3), Ottos (2), a Champion and other nursery brats. Even our scoutmaster back then was a nurseryman, Jay Kish, River Road Nursery. Nowadays we would refer to all this as an ‘Industry Cluster’, a symbiotic nexus of industry players, partners and suppliers…but back then we just called it…Perry.
With two older brothers in the nursery the tasks that fell to me were not so much difficult as mind-numbing, like dibbling tiny mollis azalea seedlings into small pots with a re-fashioned fountain pen. I invented ways to avoid work in the nursery after school, like joining the chess team and, later, majoring in English at The Ohio State University. Still, I kept drifting back to nursery employers in Columbus and Denver, so I went back to school and majored in accounting. Hah! But even that didn’t take, so my wife, Kristine, and I returned to the company in 1983 and managed it for the next thirty five years. At one point we ran two florist shops, a year-round garden center, plus a wholesale nursery with a container area and a propagation facility. We employed up to fifty seasonal workers… a total of over 750 throughout those years including many students… and made regular wholesale deliveries in our own trucks from Rochester NY to Indianapolis. (I’m not bragging, I merely seek to convey the level of our insanity…) And yet…they were fun profitable years during which we raised and fledged a pair of our own nursery brats. My father and grandfather had lengthy ‘retirements’ lasting into their eighties during which they doddered around the nursery each day (much as I do now) preparing cuttings and talking with the ladies in propagation. Kris and I have many pleasant colorful memories from a wonderful nurturing community and a vibrant industry…with few regrets. But recent years, since The Great Recession in 2008, followed by a couple brutal winters, have been difficult for local nurseries. Reaching, somehow, our 65th birthdays (and 44th anniversary!) in September 2017, we decided, with approval from the rest of the family, to close the book on Gilson Gardens. Kris works now for a florist shop in Mentor and I seek to resurrect my brief career in accounting! But we always want to stay close to our nursery roots!
The story of local nurseries is a truly American tale of family businesses and dynasties. Statistically, less than 4% of all family businesses survive into the fourth generation. Storrs & Harrison Nursery lasted almost 100 years into the WWII era when the fields north of Rt 20 were sold to the Industrial Rayon Company. Yet Harriet Storrs continued to live at the family residence on Rt 20 across from Fairport Nursery Road until 1957. Three years later upon her death a substantial fortune was donated to The Cleveland Foundation resulting in the formation of the Lake/Geauga Fund which continues important local philanthropy to this day. Wayside Gardens, with fields scattered across Eastern Lake County, succumbed in 1975, but the name was sold to George Park Seed Company in South Carolina and remains associated with high-quality mail-order offerings across the country. In addition, Dick Boonstra, former Wayside manager, formed Bluestone Perennials in Madison in 1972 which remains a national mail-order powerhouse to this day. The Kohankies sold to the Hortons, the Champion Brothers to the Zampinis, various local operations have found a home in recent years under the Petitti umbrella.
With the 1960s came the advent of ‘container growing’ and natural soils became less critical. Availability of affordable workers willing to perform the demanding work became a limiting factor on many traditional labor-intensive nursery tasks. Mega-nurseries rose in the south and west unhampered by winter cold and snow. However, an Economic Impact Survey of nurseries in Lake County performed in 2008 (funded by The Cleveland Foundation) indicated that although the remaining number of nurseries was under seventy, their combined annual sales, mostly at the wholesale level, exceeded $80 Million. Furthermore, the 1300 full-time-equivalent industry workers supported over 4500 jobs in the broader economy.
Challenges remain for local growers, but so do opportunities.
For over 160 years nursery operators have appreciated the ecologies, enterprises and hardworking individuals of Lake County…their footsteps trace a proud and productive legacy alongside the cultivated rows of flowering shrubs, shade trees and hardy perennials…their voices echo across this special and remarkable place to live, work and grow old. Thanks for taking this little nursery tour along our ridges, roads and ancient lakes. We’ve only scratched the surface!
Sources:
White, George W., Glacial Geology of Lake County, Ohio, State of Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Geological Survey, Columbus, 1980.
Ritchie, A. and Reeder, N.E., Soil Survey of Lake County, Ohio, United States Department of Agriculture Soil Conservation Service, January 1979.
Edgar, Chad, Lake County Soil and Water Conservation District, April 2018, conversation with Mark Gilson.
George ‘Josh’ Haskell, local attorney and historian.
Bob Endebrock, Ohio Department of Agriculture Nursery Inspector (retired)
James Schroeder, Mentor Rose Growers.
Perry Historical Society.
Morley Library.
Thanks to various additional sources associated with Nursery Growers of Lake County Ohio, Inc.
Photos courtesy of Perry Historical Society, NGLCO File and Mark Gilson.
Mark Gilson is a third-generation nurseryman and past-president of Nursery Growers of Lake County, Ohio. Visit: http://gilsongardens.biz/category/marks-corner/
People often ask why Lake County became such a mega-center for nurseries.
In the beginning, 1854, the first nursery resulted from the vision of one man, Jesse Storrs, who moved his family and nursery to Painesville from Cortland, New York. Four years later, he was joined by another visionary, JJ Harrison, an English immigrant, and they became partners in what would become the largest departmental nursery in the world. Transportation undoubtedly played a role in attracting Storrs to Northeastern Ohio. The railroads arrived in 1852 and connected local farmers, finally, to eastern markets. But there had to be more than transportation attracting these horticultural pioneers and the additional 200 nurseries that followed.
A study of the nursery locations in eastern Lake County reveals a ‘Nursery Belt’, three to seven miles from north to south beginning near the Lake Erie shoreline, and twenty miles wide, extending from County Line Road in Madison (a few historic nurseries were located to the east in Ashtabula County) and then westward through Mentor.
This modern member map for the local nursery association shows the concentration of nurseries in eastern Lake County.
To understand this Nursery Belt we need to look back over our geological history to the glaciers and the formation of three ancient lakes…four if we include present-day Lake Erie…from which we derive such gentle topography and such a diversity of unique productive soils.
During the most recent ‘ice age’ (known as the Wisconsin period extending from 11,000 to 100,000 years ago) Lake County was covered at least five times by glaciers, sometimes up to a mile high. Some glaciers extended well into Southern Ohio but the most recent reached only into southern Lake County. With each glacier came sand, gravel and rocks from the north. With each thawing and retreat, lakes were formed. The beaches from three of those ancient lakes gave rise to the ridges we recognize now.
Whittlesey was the highest ancient lake, 150’above current-day Lake Erie. Deposits of sand and gravel up to 20’ thick follow its irregular path from Unionville, through Madison, Perry, Painesville, and westward through Willoughby, conforming to a great extent with the current South Ridge Road (Rt 84). This ancient beach defines the southern edge of the Nursery Belt since soils beyond it generally become heavier and less hospitable. The nurseries of Wick Hathaway (1877) and Ed Wetzel (1917) were founded on South Ridge Road in Madison. Wetzel, like many others, began as a childhood worker at Storrs & Harrison Nursery at age 11. Gerard K Klyn Nursery began in 1921 on Center Street in Mentor, across from the current Mentor High School, but moved to Rt 84 in Perry in 1966. LCN began as Zampini Nursery and Champions Nursery in Perry Village but relocated to South Ridge Road in the 1980s on the site of the former Nick Mesman Nursery. These two operations continue to dominate the high ridge above the Nursery Belt.
Soils throughout the Nursery Belt were formed from glacial till then shaped and reshaped by waves and wind. Some contain abundant organic matter like the strip of black muck that runs just to the north of North Ridge. Some are more sandy, especially as they near the current lakeshore. Some have higher concentrations of clay rendering them ‘heavier’ like those in Mentor favored by the Rose Growers. The true story is this: Lake County is not just blessed with ‘good soil’…but with a unique diversity of fertile soils. A review of the soil map for the Nursery Belt reveals over 17 discrete types.
At 120’ above Lake Erie, the ancient shore of Lake Arkona defines the Middle Ridge, which follows a discontinuous line along ‘Middle Ridge Road’ in Madison and Perry, following ‘Narrows Road’ as it nears Painesville and joining with Johnnycake Ridge Road in Mentor. Early nurseries founded in Perry near ‘Middle Ridge’ included L. Green & Son (1865), Merriman Nursery (1868), Call’s Nursery (1874) Champions (1891), TB West Nursery (1893) which later became Champions, and Dugan Nurseries (1908). More recent nurseries include Maple Bend, Frank Square’s Nursery, Cottage Gardens, Don Stallard’sNursery and CM Browns(1970) in Perry; Crawfords, Turkenburg , Cass-Mill and Bluestone(1972) in Madison.
North Ridge, closest to modern Lake Erie and rising 100’ above it, conforms to Lake Warren as it winds, splits and reforms along North Ridge Road (Route 20), becoming Erie Street, Mentor Avenue and Euclid Avenue on its way to downtown Cleveland. Many still remember the Rt 20 of the 1950s prior to the interstate highway system. Trucks and cars lumbered by at all hours on their way from Buffalo to Chicago. Numerous small motels with guest cabins operated in every community along the way.
Interspersed in the traffic were tractors, farm wagons and stake-trucks, driven by Italians, Puerto Ricans, Hungarians and every other nationality as they attended to the daily demands and realities of The Nursery Capital of the World.
Well-drained soils on beach ridges and terraces throughout the area include Chenango, Chili, Conotton, Oshtemo, Otisville and Tyner, although the last four do not hold together well for digging, balling and burlapping. Poorly drained soils such as Fitchville, Stafford, Painesville and Red Hook offer better digging qualities once the fields are tiled and drained. Some areas such as Perry were originally covered with wetlands. ‘Elnora loamy fine sand’ to the north of Rt 20 in Perry is a productive nursery soil when artificially drained with tiles. The ‘Elnora’ soil is often interspersed with fast-drying ‘Colonie loamy fine sand.’ To the south of North Ridge Road local growers in Perry encounter ‘Tyner loamy sand’ on the post-glacial beach ridges. These soils are accessible to tractors and equipment early in the season but require irrigation for summer crops.
Productive ‘topsoils’ range from three to eighteen inches deep. Since topsoil can require 500 to 1000 years per inch to occur naturally, depletion of the surface levels over time is a serious concern. Fortunately, digging and shipping of balled and burlapped nursery stock depletes the topsoil very slowly over many decades. In addition, modern nurseries specializing in field-grown material employ aggressive soil re-building techniques, such as cover cropping and the introduction of fresh organic matter each season in the form of nursery compost, leaf compost from local residential neighborhoods and specially formulated ‘county compost’ from local sewage treatment plants. These materials are cultivated into the subsoil each year and provide a sustainable model for future nursery production.
Read Part 2 next week!
Sources:
White, George W., Glacial Geology of Lake County, Ohio, State of Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Geological Survey, Columbus, 1980.
Ritchie, A. and Reeder, N.E., Soil Survey of Lake County, Ohio, United States Department of Agriculture Soil Conservation Service, January 1979.
Edgar, Chad, Lake County Soil and Water Conservation District, April 2018, conversation with Mark Gilson.
George ‘Josh’ Haskell, local attorney and historian.
Bob Endebrock, Ohio Department of Agriculture Nursery Inspector (retired)
James Schroeder, Mentor Rose Growers.
Perry Historical Society.
Morley Library.
Thanks to various additional sources associated with Nursery Growers of Lake County Ohio, Inc.
Photos courtesy of Perry Historical Society, NGLCO File and Mark Gilson.
Mark Gilson is a third-generation nurseryman and past-president of Nursery Growers of Lake County, Ohio. Visit: http://gilsongardens.biz/category/marks-corner/
Sometimes the things we view every day are relegated to a lesser role in our lives. They become commonplace, uninspiring, unimportant. That is why we must travel occasionally, even if just for a silent momentary reverie, from which we return and view our daily world anew. Asclepias in all its forms shouts to us from the roadsides and meadows each year with striking flowers, waving foliage and elongated seed pods (follicles). A durable, tenacious and adaptable family that does a lot of heavy lifting for our local ecologies, Asclepias deserves a closer look and greater appreciation!
Credit: Mark Gilson
Asclepias tuberosa
Butterflyweed is a faithful herald of summer in Northeast Ohio, blooming bright orange along our roadways and meadows. A few years ago I noticed the flowers in late-June off Rt 2 in Painesville along the dry road-banks near the Grand River. Had they always been there? Two months later I donned my amateur-plant-explorer hat and set off in search of seeds. Parking on the freeway and climbing the fence would have been the most direct approach, but difficult to explain to Ohio Highway Patrol. Instead, I headed north of the city through a warren of curving streets, small homes and apartments, aiming for the utility wires that followed the highway. Undeterred, I crawled under a locked fence and hiked a quarter mile. A few pods waved among the weeds here and there, but not the multitude I had anticipated. Had the meadow been mowed? Were these truly A. tuberosa or were other species mixed in? Did E.H. Wilson run into these problems as he sought out cherries in Japan?
Above all, gardeners need to be patient.
Credit: Lois Rose
I waited a year, revisited the spot in June and attached orange tagging ribbon to dozens of butterflyweed. In the fall I returned and collected absurd amounts of seed pods from verifiable A. tuberosa.
My goal was to provide seed of ‘local genotype’. As a nurseryman this had never been a priority for me. Then I met the good folks from Cleveland Museum of Natural History (CMNH) and life, horticulture, spirituality became science-based and complicated. I was starting over. Returning home with my bounty, I was visited by misgivings. How can I be certain these plants represent ‘local genotypes’ of native plants? After all, my secret spot was less than a mile from Storrs & Harrison Nursery, one of the world’s largest, which operated for almost a hundred years. Other nurseries and other perennial-growers had flourished all around. What if my ‘genotypes’ had originated in Mexico, Malta or Madagascar? Should I test for genetic markers and, if so, where would I find a reliable baseline reference? Ultimately, I decided to go ahead with my ‘local native plants’ and let Jim Bissell (Botanist/Maven for CMNH) worry about the consequences. Let the buyer beware.
Drought-tolerant and long-lived, aslepias tuberosa is a great candidate for rain-gardens and low maintenance areas with dry well-drained soil. Sometimes called Orange Milkweed or Butterfly Milkweed, this species has less of the milky sap than its cousins. At 12-24” in height the orange flower clusters (umbels), lance-shaped dark green leaves and sturdy stems provide support for taller companions. Favored by Monarch Butterfly caterpillars, hummingbirds and native pollinators, the plant responds to trimming and looks handsome in a well-tended garden. I’ve seen container-plants over at Klyn Nurseries that are so colorful and crowned they resemble a greenhouse pot plant. Native Americans chewed the tap root to treat pulmonary illness, leading to another of its names, Pleurisy Root. Combine it with yarrow, which blooms at the same time (my favorite is the tall, old-fashioned Achillea x ‘Coronation Gold’) for a colorful cut-flower combination. Some gardeners flame the base of the stem before placing it in a cut-flower vase in order to reduce the flow of sap. Color variations from yellow to red occur naturally; cultivars are available from specialty growers and other evil-doers.
Credit: Lois Rose
Be careful promising A. tuberosa to the Spring Plant Sales. It takes a while to wake up and sometimes does not like being forced in the greenhouse.
Aslepias incarnata
Swamp Milkweed, asclepias incarnata, is a comparative giant at 4-5’. With pale pink flowers appearing slightly later than Butterflyweed, this ecologically important native plant is best-known to many of us for the dried pods that explode with cottony bundles in Fall and Winter. Native to wet areas and river bottoms in Ohio, Swamp Milkweed also thrives in relatively dry conditions.
Credit: Laura Dempsey
All these Asclepias form tap roots when grown in the soil, rendering them difficult to transplant in the garden. Yet they grow happily in a container with a well-drained mix. I dug up an A. incarnata once and moved it to a native garden in our nursery. It suffered horribly the first season but later regenerated from roots and took off. Allan Armitage writes about the nightmare of weeding Milkweeds from nursery rows and gardens. Not only do the roots grow down, they grow sideways! One volunteer that I left alone in our nursery spread eight feet in sandy soil before I realized what it had going!
Credit: Laura Dempsey
Asclepias syriaca
Garrett Ormiston, one of those educated folks over at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, corrected my ID of a statuesque milkweed in our nursery. What I was calling Swamp Milkweed turned out to be Common Milkweed, aslepias syriaca. One of the best plants for providing food to butterflies and their larvae, says Garrett, its leaves are broader and it prefers drier areas than Swamp Milkweed. Also, the pale-pink flowers are round rather than flat. I think it provides a stunning although overlooked specimen for gardens and natural areas. If this was recently discovered or developed…it would be touted by Proven Winners!
Credit: Mark Gilson
I collected Common Milkweed seeds and left them in our tool room for over a year (it’s our only roof that doesn’t leak). Busting open the pods makes a mess with all the white fuzzies (a technical term), but after some experimentation I found I could pinch out the silks and find a bounty of round dark seeds beneath, clustered there like tiny coins. I scattered the seeds in late-winter in an open tray filled with regular potting soil. I provided a light covering of sand, although that was probably not necessary. I placed the trays under intermittent mist because it is generally more reliable than my intermittent watering. Alternatively, just moisten the soil and place the tray in a sealed clear plastic bag. A couple weeks later the seedlings began poking up through the sand and soon filled in like the proverbial hairs on a dog’s back. Usually we dibble the seedlings into two-inch cells and offer them that way or later shift them to larger containers. As far as cultural conditions in the nursery, let me just say I am amazed at how much abuse these durable plants can take.
Credit: Mark Gilson
The tray in the photo was moved to a shade house from which it subsequently disappeared. An extensive investigation revealed that a student worker discarded it, remarking he thought it was a tray taken over by ‘weeds’. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.
Don’t believe the toxicity warnings by Euell Gibbons from 1962. Remember Euell Gibbons and ‘wild hickory nuts?’ Leaves of Common Milkweed have no bitterness when tasted raw and can be prepared like asparagus with no additional processing.
Something is Eating My Plant!
Milkweeds present a conundrum to the gardener and grower. When we say…’beneficial to local ecologies and pollinators’…we mean…’bugs will eat the heck out of them’. Here it is…should we apply pesticides to our native plants? Inspectors for Ohio Department of Agriculture frequent our nurseries and object to any commerce in bugs. They force us to use helicopters each year for gypsy moth control.
Credit: Mark Gilson
Last year the Asclepias in our garden center were visited by two giant voracious caterpillars. My wife, who loves monarch butterflies as much as a good cabernet, took this on as a learning opportunity for our customers. She raised butterflies on the counter in our store, brought in ladybugs, and watched our Asclepias disappear day by day. Once I saw her sell a denuded stem in a No. 2 container. The happy customer responded to her story…’I know…I know!’ The story is getting out. The foliage, after all, grows back pretty quickly, just in time for hordes of orange aphids. In our wholesale nursery, again, we’re not supposed to sell plants covered with orange aphids. Since I don’t like to apply pesticides (it’s one of my least favorite jobs), I decided to leave it up to the customer. Some took the plants along with the teeming hitchhikers.
Credit: Laura Dempsey
While the scientific debate regarding neonicotinoid pesticides, in particular, and their impact on pollinators rages on, we just read in a nursery industry newsletter: “Treating swamp milkweed with neonicotinoids, regardless of active ingredients, application timing and method, resulted in high concentrations of residue in nectar.” (Source: Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, Journal of Environmental Horticulture, Volume 35, page 24-34). While the effect of pesticide residues on pollinators remains a matter of scientific inquiry, and while it would be heresy for a nurseryman to object to all pesticides (and I don’t!), let’s rely on ladybugs and a judicious blast of water from a hose to control bugs, when we need to, on our Asclepias!
Asclepias…what a great story-plant for teaching the public about natives, nurseries, ecologies, pollinators and how it can all come together in our gardens!
Mark Gilson is a third-generation nurseryman and past-president of Nursery Growers of Lake County, Ohio. Visit: http://gilsongardens.biz/category/marks-corner/
There are two Clevelands, two Akrons, two Northeastern Ohios. There is the proud bustling workhorse of the past and present, turning out engines and steel, pistons and paint, tires and complex chemistries for a hungry nation. There is also the quiet Cleveland, the soil and rivers and forests of our youth, the farms, nurseries and parks that stretch from Summit and Portage to the Lake, a vast watershed of memories, legacies and possibilities. Our vision, our challenge, is to bring together these mighty opposites in a dynamic, responsible and sustainable partnership yielding a region where we can live and play in a vibrant emerald ecosystem, profit from our conscientious industry and ethic, and grow old with the knowledge that we work and yearn within a vital nexus of grand ideas and restless energies.
