19 minute read
Growing Forward
Leslie Cario
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Have you ever found yourself speculating how you will sustain your growing or landscape operation in the future? Not so much in terms of work, because that aspect of the industry has been going strong, but in terms of who will do the work and who will step up to leadership roles. At a time when technology has taken such a prominent role in the economy, and young people have their sights set on tech careers, it has become challenging to bring them into our businesses. Fortunately, there are several organizations connected to the MNLGA whose varied missions overlap with the common aim of conveying young people into the field of horticulture. By learning more about these organizations’ good work, and how we can provide support, we are likely to keep the field going strong and experience a positive return in the future. A long-time partner of the MNLGA, the Maryland Agricultural Education Foundation (MAEF) seeks to promote “the understanding and appreciation of the importance of agriculture in our daily lives.” In addition to educating about food and nutrition, MAEF sheds light on the varied and exciting careers related to agriculture. More specific to horticulture, this can translate to employment with the products, technology, and research useful to the industry, in addition to growing the plant material. MAEF serves students in grades K through 12, and accomplishes this through working directly with the students, through programs such as Maryland FFA, and through grants and professional development for teachers, who in turn work with the students. There are several ways that horticulture professionals can lend support to MAEF’s mission, according to MAEF’s Communications Director Amie McDaniels. One of the most direct ways is to provide outreach to students about our professions, by sharing what we do, how we got there, and why we chose to be there. This outreach can happen while assisting with a mobile lab or showcase. Horticulture professionals can also offer guidance in terms of planting and garden maintenance to a school that has been chosen as a recipient of one of MAEF’s garden grants or apply their general knowledge to assist with development of lesson plans, which in turn will strengthen MAEF’s robust programming. In addition to personal fulfillment, involvement with MAEF helps bring awareness to the broader public and reinforce the importance of agriculture and its connection with protecting our natural resources.
A forward-thinking and relatively new organization in Maryland, the American Landscape Institute (ALI) is working to “attract and train the next generation of horticultural professionals” through a unique combination of academic training and concurrent hands-on experience with a horticultural operation. Partnering with the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) and MAEF, the original intended target demographic had been recent graduates of high school, according to ALI’s Executive Secretary Martha Pindale, although this has expanded to include several college graduates looking to make a new career choice. “The best way to support ALI is to be willing to interview a student, hopefully hire him or her and employ them while they take Horticulture classes each Friday, for 7 semesters. Or a company could put a current employee through the program,” explained Pindale. Horticultural operations could also opt to be a donor to the ALI program, particularly if they are not in a position to hire an ALI student or put a current employee though the program. Direct financial support helps make it possible for ALI to provide a 20% tuition discount each semester to students participating in the ALI program. Participation by sponsoring and mentoring a student will directly benefit your operation by guaranteeing a knowledgeable, welltrained employee joins the staff, while financial support will help on a broader scale to ensure a viable horticulture industry.
On a national scale, the quickly growing Seed Your Future coalition brings together over 150 horticultural organizations that are “united in their mission to cultivate the next generation of horticulturists and plant enthusiasts.” The coalition recently launched BLOOM!, designed to educate middle school students about the importance of plants and the appealing careers available through the field of horticulture, and is poised to expand the message to the college student level. Through its website, the BLOOM! initiative shares a variety of educational and promotional resources, including one we can all get on board with, #ILoveMyPlantJob. Simply share a selfie with that hashtag while at work on your horticulture job. If you work directly with students, you can make use of the expansive BLOOM! toolkit to help spread the message of plant power, and in turn, you may have something to add to the toolkit. Potential benefits of involvement include cultivating future customers and employees, by ensuring that the next generation does not suffer from “plant blindness” and understands the value and power of plants. Taylor Pilker, ALI student, Daria Andreyak and Ferenc Kiss of Cavano’s Management
With an increased awareness about groups that are working to bring young people into the field of horticulture and how we can assist with their efforts, we are more likely to get involved in these enriching opportunities. It doesn’t stop with the organizations profiled here- MNLGA’s student CPH certificate program, Chesapeake Bay Landscape Professional (CBLP) Apprentice Program with Howard EcoWorks, and Anne Arundel Community College’s Landscape Management Technician Apprentice Program, among others, would also benefit from your support. These experiences, in turn, will benefit our industry and potentially our own businesses. With MNLGA’s continued support of these groups through donations and/or publicity, you can be confident that each is a worthy organization to lend your own support. ❦
Leslie Hunter Cario Chesapeake Horticultural Services lesliecario@cheshort.com www.chesapeakehort.com
Leslie Hunter Cario is a Certified Professional Horticulturist and IPAC board advisor to the MNLGA, also licensed as a Nutrient Management Consultant and a Pest/Disease Consultant through the Maryland Department of Agriculture and certified as a Chesapeake Bay Landscape Professional Level 2 - design and installation. She runs Chesapeake Horticultural Services, consulting with nurseries, landscape operations, and non-profits on planning, production, research, and botanical projects.
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David Thompson Elected as a Fellow of The IPPS Eastern Region
W. David Thompson, President of Foxborough Nursery in Street, Maryland has been named a Fellow of the IPPS Eastern Region. The Fellow Award is presented to members who exhibit exemplary service to the Society and to the advancement of the field of propagation and production. The announcement was made on October 17th at the Annual Conference of the IPPS Eastern Region held in Madison, Wisconsin.
Thompson has been a member of the IPPS Eastern Region since 1976. He has served on five IPPS committees, has contributed four papers to the IPPS proceedings, and currently serves on the IPPS Eastern Region Board of Directors. Growing up inspired by his family’s vegetable and flower gardens, Thompson studied horticulture at the University of Maryland, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in 1975. In 1978, he founded Foxborough Nursery with his wife, Marilyn. In the ensuing 40 years Foxborough Nursery has grown to a 525-acre operation well known in the horticultural industry for specializing in rare and unusual plant material.
Today Foxborough Nursery features an inventory of over 900 cultivars, mostly propagated from cuttings or grafts. Their goal is to grow the finest quality true-to-name trees and shrubs on the East Coast. The next generation of Thompsons, David and Marilyn’s sons Brad and Andrew, have prominent roles at Foxborough in addition to their own business, Brothers Berries, a cut winterberry branch business. In addition to his successful business, David has served important roles in the Maryland Nursery and Landscape Association, from which he received the Professional Achievement Award, and the Mid-Atlantic Nursery Trade Show. In 1994 he was honored by the University of Maryland College of Agriculture Alumni Association’s Meritorious Service of Agriculture award. He is also a founding member of the American Conifer Society and has served as president of its Eastern Region chapter.
Upon receiving the Fellow Award, David commented that he was “shocked, proud and honored to be named a Fellow.” He remembered fondly that when he graduated, his mentors encouraged him to join IPPS and he has been a member ever since! The International Plant Propagators’ Society is a non-profit organization of over 1600 members organized into eight separate regions around the world. The membership is made up of those with a professional interest in plant propagation and production from businesses, colleges and universities, botanic gardens and arboreta. The motto of this non-commercial organization is “To Seek and To Share” knowledge and experience in plant propagation and production.
David Thompson, left, with Recognition Committee Chair, Brian Maynard
Over 1500 Varie� es available Celebra� ng 39 years in business
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John C. ‘Jack’ Lowry, a nurseryman who co-owned Lowry & Co. with his wife, dies
By FREDERICK N. RASMUSSEN BALTIMORE SUN
John C. “Jack” Lowry, a nurseryman and co-owner of Lowry & Co. and a collector of vintage automobiles who made plant deliveries to clients in a black Cadillac hearse, died July 27 of lung cancer at his home in the Phoenix community of Baltimore County. He was 87.
“I was a customer of Jack Lowry’s but he was a vital mentor of mine,” said Chris Snavely, who since 1971 has owned Snavely’s Garden Corner in Chambersburg, Pa. “And because I knew Jack from the very beginning of my business and through all the years, our relationship was not only a valuable business one, but also a valuable personal one. I was 14 when I first got to know him, and that goes way back 50 years.”
John Cathcart Lowry, the son of William Fleming Lowry Jr., an American Car and Foundry salesman, and his wife, Martha Ryan Lowry, a nationally recognized floral designer and author of “Floral Art for America,” was born and raised in Bethel Park, Pa. He was a 1950 graduate of Bethel Park High School and enlisted in the Army. He served in Korea as a mechanic and officers club bartender, family members said. After being discharged, he earned a bachelor’s degree in horticulture in 1958 from Penn State, and began his professional career as a horticulturist and garden designer for the Towson Nurseries store in Cockeysville. In 1958, he married the former Marilyn Jean Bushyager and settled on Sweet Air Road in the Phoenix neighborhood, where they raised three children.
The couple began their business, Lowry & Co. in 1964, and Mrs. Lowry, who was known as Jean, served as secretary-treasurer of the plant and horticultural business, which represented nurseries from coast to coast.
Mr. Lowry, who was president of the firm, was a collector and purveyor of fine trees, and he furnished plants and horticultural products to garden centers, landscape firms and horticultural distribution centers. In the early days of the business, Mr. Lowry, who had a passion for vintage autos, purchased a 1953 black Cadillac ambulance-hearse, which he converted to transport plant samples to clients. “My father managed a small garden center in Hagerstown, and Jack Lowry first knocked on the door of the garden center approximately in 1962,” Mr. Snavely remembered. “He pulled up to Dad’s store with a hearse that he had modified for his needs filled to capacity with plants.”
Said Mrs. Lowry in a 2017 biographical sketch: “Jack was known for that hearse and people still ask if we have it.” She reminisced about the early days of the business “when there were no computers or fax machines, and all Jack needed was a pen, an order blank and a car.”
A daughter, Nancy Lowry Moitrier of Annapolis, wrote in a biographical profile of her father: “His successful career as a nursery representative was built brokering nursery materials from the Northwest, the South, the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. He supplied plant materials to hundreds of garden centers, nurseries and wholesale distribution centers in the Mid-Atlantic region.
“His knowledge and sales savvy techniques enabled many small boutique growers of exceptional plants to gain a foothold and a wider audience. His connectivity
skills helped their businesses grow and prosper. He put little known, good horticultural growers, on the map. With his many horticultural connections, he had the ability to locate and deliver interesting plants in exceptional sizes for special gardens or Landscape projects.”
Said Mr. Snavely: “Jack was a character and that led to a lot of relationships coast to coast.” A trademark of Mr. Lowry’s was conducting business with a handshake, which to him meant a solid agreement, and out of his business relationships grew lifelong friendships.
Mr. Lowry was active in organizations that promoted horticulture, and he played an important role in the establishment of the Mid-Atlantic Nursery Trade Show, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year. He had served on its board from 1974 to 1979 and was president in 1977. Mr. Lowry was on the board of the Maryland Nurseryman’s Association from 1967 to 1971, and served two terms as president. In 1984 to 1985, he was on the board of the Landscape Contractors Association of Metropolitan Washington. He was on the board of the American Horticultural Society, one of the nation’s oldest national gardening organizations, from 2008 to 2010.
Mr. Lowry was still working at his death. “He loved work, and work was his life,” Ms. Moitrier said in a telephone interview. Mr. Lowry brought passion to his many collections, his daughter said. He enjoyed collecting, restoring and showing classic vintage cars from his collection, which included Cadillac limousines, Lincoln-Zephyrs, which were built from 1936 to 1942, Ford Thunderbirds, and MercedesBenzes. One of his outstanding cars was a 1948 Cadillac limousine painted a “beautiful burgundy
color,” his daughter said.
During the 1970s, Mr. Lowry was a board member of the Lincoln-Zephyr Club. His collecting interests ranged from cars to marbles, whiskey decanters and radios, and even clocks, keys and flashlights. Mr. Lowry also collected plants, and he and his wife’s 1-acre garden was frequently included on tours organized by the Maryland Horticultural Society, the Annapolis Horticultural Society and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society.
“In a suburban development in Phoenix, Maryland, it’s easy to spot Jack and Jean Lowry’s home. Their acclaimed collection of trees and plants begins curbside,” Baltimore Style magazine reported. “An artistic, year-round tapestry of conifers, Ginkgoes and Japanese maples — highly textured and in a spectrum of yellows, greens and reds — offers the Lowrys screening from the road, and their neighbors a glimpse of a first-class garden more than five decades in the growing.”
Mr. Lowry also enjoyed observing and feeding the birds that visited the garden. He was a member of the Hillendale Country Club, where he was instrumental in designing and maintenance of the grounds of the clubhouse after it was rebuilt in 1993. He also enjoyed golfing and played in the club’s Men’s Weekly Twilight series for more than 20 years.
Mr. Lowry’s wife died last year. In addition to his daughter, he is survived by a son, John Ryan Lowry of Finksburg; another daughter, Kim Hultberg of Forest Hill; and four grandchildren.
Paul E. Schlosser
Paul Eugene Schlosser passed away at the age of 84 at his home on Hilton Head Island with his beloved wife of 59 years and his loving children by his side. Paul, Rose and their family moved from Maryland 39 years ago where Paul had formed a landscape contracting business. Some of the beautification of Washington, D.C. was performed by his company as a result of the Lady Bird Johnson Beautification Act of 1965. He was a member of the Landscape Contractors Association and the Maryland Nurserymen’s Association.
Paul had a huge zest for life and an insatiable thirst for knowledge. He cherished family gatherings and traveling with his wife, children and grandchildren.
He was a licensed private pilot who had a passion for flying. He also enjoyed fishing, golfing, and boating. In addition to his wife, Rose Marie Schlosser, he is survived by his son, Andy Schlosser (Pam) of Sudlersville, MD, his daughters, Sandy Bond of Bluffton, SC , Julie Scott (Thurber) of Hilton Head Island, SC and Debbie King (Frank) of Bluffton, SC; his brother, Courtney Schlosser (Sue) of Worchester, MA; his sisters, Ann Fields of Mandeville, LA, Shirley McCarthy of Bethesda, MD; and his grandchildren, Bryan Schlosser (Jenn), Kimberly Schlosser, Zach Bond, Luke Bond, Josh Bond, Abigail Scott, Anna Scott, Hailey King, Dalton King and Max, his dog and faithful friend.
The Schlosser family wishes to extend their gratitude to Hospice Care of South Carolina for their care and support of Paul and the family. Memorial services will be held at 11:00 am, Saturday, November 9, 2019 at St. Luke’s Church, Hilton Head, 50 Pope Avenue, Hilton Head Island, SC 29928. Please consider donations in memory of Paul E. Schlosser to the St. Luke’s Church Landscaping Fund.
Kollar Nursery
Native wildflowers, ferns, perennials, shrubs and trees for restoration, wildlife, landscaping, education, aesthetics or that special project. Contract growing. Since 1985.
5200 West Heaps Road, Pylesville, MD 21132 (410) 836-0500 www.kollarnursery.com
PUBLICATION NOTICE: The deadline for submissions for the spring issue of Free State Nursery, Landscape and Greenhouse News is April 1, 2020. We welcome your company news and updates or columns with your professional insight. E-mail anysubmissions to Free State News at freestate@mnlga.org or mail to: Maryland Nursery, Landscape, and Greenhouse Association P.O. Box 726, Brooklandville, MD 21022
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A M E R I C A N LANDSCAPE INSTITUTE
The American Landscape Institute (ALI) and the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) have created a 2-year scholarship program for high school graduates. ALI is a first-of-its-kind training and development program for the Horticulture and landscape industry. Owners of leading Baltimore area landscape and nursery companies have come together to offer employment, mentoring, hands-on field experience, and an 80% scholarship to CCBC. Student trainees work for their participating company 4 days per week and attend classes at CCBC Hunt Valley every Friday, for 2 years. On the job training begins Spring/ Summer 2018. Classes begin September 2018. Graduates earn a 2 Year Certificate in Landscape Design and Installation.
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Please donate to help our program grow! The American Landscape Institute is a non-profit organization and donations are tax deductible. You can donate online, or mail checks to P.O. Box 52, Monkton, MD 21111.
Visit the ALI website to learn more!
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”The business of horticulture, like our environment, is an everevolving science. To be a professional is to not become complacent in one’s knowledge, but to strive to continually build upon experience. Continuing Education Units require CPHs to regularly learn new techniques, earth friendly practices and aesthetic trends applicable to nurseries, garden centers and landscape professionals. Nancy Lowry Moitrier, APLD Horticulturist/ Landscape Designer Designs for Greener Gardens, Inc. Certified Professional Horticulturists (CPH) provide either “do-it-yourself” or professional landscape installation and maintenance advice.
You only grow the best. Why not offer your customers the best in advice, too! For more information contact the Maryland Nursery, Landscape and Greenhouse Association 410-823-8684 or visit mnlga.org
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Enriching Lives Through Education in Agriculture
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