Specialty Nursery Profile: issima, Little Compton, Rhode Island
If there was an unofficial motto for issima (www.issimaworks.com), it would be “the smallest nursery in the smallest state” in co-proprietor Ed Bowen’s wry words. 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. They even have introduced several perennials, including Sanguisorba ‘Drama Queen’ which I grow in my garden. Open on select days, the nursery is an oasis in coastal New England that has seen a decline in specialty nurseries. 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. 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. To unwind, the beach is not far either.
The arts or horticulture?
Love how you present a false dilemma to two retired philosophers--how can we answer if it’s not a question?
Ed, you had the experience of working for a large garden center before breaking out to set up this nursery. A large garden center is fixated on wringing out every available dollar from every square foot. A specialty nursery tends to play to the owners’ idiosyncrasies. What lessons did you take away from your garden center job that proved applicable to issima?
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. We were truly a nursery, doing the majority of the propagation in house, and all of the growing – we never bought in finished plants. 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. 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.
Taylor, you have plenty of experiences with private and public horticulture (notably growing and staging plants at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum). What perspective do you hope to bring to an operation selling plants?
Hopefully I’ve brought an informed perspective—knowing I don’t even know what I don’t know. 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. I remember Museum Director, Anne Hawley coming into the garden every morning to evaluate our work. 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. We don’t need more factory produced “Kleenex” (disposables), which lack a genuine connection to the bigger picture/landscape. If we’re good at our jobs, we’re seeding gardens with better ideas and sentiment.
Podophyllums are one of Issima’s specialties, and occupy some real estate in the polytunnels.
Being two different individuals means having some different interests in plants. It’s a tango, a compromise of wants and needs. May I cheekily ask what plant likes and dislikes do you two haven’t been understand in each other?
(Lol). Well, there are times where we get into tiffs about how many Podophyllum seedlings we really need (aka taking up so much bench space), or why there are so many species roses/non hardy Mediterranean plants in the greenhouse. There are jabs about “going through the Z10 phase” and even more jabs about watering styles and labeling in microscopic or illegible/unintelligible fonts and numbers. We’re fortunate in that we can do more together than we can apart and our interests are mostly mutual. Part of the fun is teasing each other for nonsense/dead end /tail-chasing ideas (non Covid-19 related cough, x Mangave).
An orange Kniphofia flares like torches among the white squiggles of Sanguisorba in the stock beds. Both genera are two of Issima’s specialties.
Few specialty nurseries breed and name their plants – most are happy to focus on propagating species and existing, if not uncommon varieties. Issima has introduced Eucomis, Hydrangea, Kniphofia, Podophyllum, Sanguisorba, to name a few. What have been the standouts that are likely to be garden classics like Alan Bloom’s Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ or Ewald Hugin’s Hylotelephum ‘Matrona’?
On occasion we’ll have a chat about how few true nurseries there are these days and the joy we feel not being dependent on anyone for good ideas or plants (though we’re very grateful for friends who send interesting plants/seed!).
Taylor here: I want to add, even if it sounds obnoxious (or causes Ed to cringe), that one of the difficulties in sussing out what might end up being a garden classic is that Ed is too far ahead. He’s been collecting Sanguisorba for at least 15 years and only now do American gardeners seem to want to plant them. Many of Ed’s previous introductions when he was a one man show (Opus) aren’t mass market plants - they don’t show up in glossy magazines and they don’t fit the definition of being able to fit on racks or be micro-propagated in labs. As a result, it has taken years for some of our best plants to become best sellers (e.g., hydrangeas like ‘Mountain Mania,’ bergenias like ‘Green Monsah, kniphophias like ‘Nose Job’ & ‘Wet Dream,’ salvias like ‘Lunar Blue’, Sanguisorba ‘Drama Queen’, Platycrater (formerly OBIO: of botanical interest only) and Eucomis like ‘Rhode Island Red’). Time will tell….
The metrics of balancing the bread and butter plants and esoteric, but valuable breeding ones are a perennial challenge for any specialty nursery. More plants mean devoting more time and resources. I have seen some plants just languish in obscurity, only to shoot into the stratospheric popularity upon mention in some glossy magazine. How do you two ‘retire’ the unprofitable plants while remaining hopeful that they will be in demand later?
Fairly certain we specialize in get poor quick schemes and undesirables! In spite of how little romance there appears to be in the day to day, or how reluctant we might be to talk about that, the structure of our business and lives is centered on just that—we do the work. We’re purposefully small and don’t have employees. As a result, we live simple lives and we can pivot at a moment’s notice to grow what we want to. Happily, we’ve built an audience of keen, capable gardeners, many who know more than the supposed professionals! Not only do they share their observations, they directly support our efforts to bring better, more interesting plants to market. Even if they’re skeptical of some of our introductions at first pass, at some future weak moment, we know they’ll give something a chance. Their correspondence is one of the best parts of this work—we cherish the sassy personalities among us (Hitch Lyman, we’re looking at you).
Now is your chance to promote the plants that don’t sell, but should be in every discerning gardener’s garden. What are some of your overlooked choices?
How much time do you have!? How about an exercise in omne trium perfectum:
Delphinium mirabile - the loosely spaced flowers are a nice natural change from the modern hybrids common in the trade.
Delphinium mirabile Jonny Bruce kindly sent some seed of this Russian species in a care package. Though I admired many of the Karl Foerster hybrids for their durability, I was generally delphinium eschewing sort. As such, I told T it was likely a waste of time for her to have sown, let alone to plant out. Of course in hindsight she was right to have, as the plant’s been nearly miraculous: Informal, loose clouds of blue right through the heat and drought of summer, repeating in autumn. It has been so good caused me to rethink the genus – ultimately the best effect any plant can have on a person!
Klasea bulgarica - an Eastern European native whose serrated leaves and white thistle flowers are a standout in late summer.
Klasea bulgarica Combines bold, architectural, basal foliage with nearly leafless 4-6’ flower stems, combined with an archetypal thistle flower form. Most unusually, however, the flowers are white, and they read well in the garden making it both interesting and effective (which is not to say that I believe it’s possible to have an effective plant that is uninteresting). We have it with Sanguisorba ‘The Invisible’, a perfect marriage of dots and dashes, with both suspended in an ether of Molinia ‘Skyracer’. It’s been a top draw for butterflies and bees. It’s a bit of a taxonomical enigma, as it was first introduced (and I received as) Serratula, but the enigma adds to the appeal for me. Suspecting it was a Cirsium, we have attempted to cross it with numerous other Cirsium species, and now have plants with flowers of various shades of mauvey pink flowers, but can’t say it if was just a color break or if we have hybrids— stay tuned. Suspect Z5
Patrinia monandra (P. punctiflora) with Lobelia cardinalis.
Patrinia monandra (P. punctiflora) I received this from Hans Kramer, drawn to it by the HeHeHe collection prefix, which I knew meant it was collected by Gothenberg. It died in the importation process, but James Horner kindly provided seed on a subsequent trip, and I’m indebted: From bud through to seed, it’s effective as a charteusey scrim and frothy filler from July through October, becoming more attractive as it ages. In appearance, both in color and form, it is reminiscent of an umbel, and will cause those who recoil from the chrome yellow of P. scabiosifolia to re-assess the genus. We’ve even used as cuts.
issima shows that the beauty of propagation is its economy. One doesn’t necessarily need high tech gizmos and gadgetry to increase plants from seed, cuttings, or division. How do you two pace yourself when it comes to spring frenzy of sowing, rooting, and potting while fulfilling orders?
Thank you—we love to encourage people to do a lot with very little. We’re cheap fuck Yankees (apologies, can we curse here?!), so even if we had all the resources available, we’d likely do everything the same—it works and is the most parsimonious way to go about cultivating and propagating the number of taxa we love to grow.
How do we pace ourselves? We get up everyday and go to work, 7 days a week. It’s not always fun, but we love what we do and have a natural/intuitive rhythm to the process. It’s sort of like how you might know when to turn left against ongoing traffic when driving a car. You may not be able to provide a calculation for the speed of the oncoming car, or the parabolic curve of your steering wheel, but you simply and intuitively know when to go and how fast to touch the gas pedal. This is a human scale business and our intuition guides our work more than any scientific/excel spreadsheet driven process. Thankfully, prior to working together, we were both head growers/gardeners without clipboards or spreadsheets—we just knew when and how from years spent doing the work. That’s really the only classroom that matters.
It’s a dirty open secret that some specialty nurseries and even larger garden centers that pride on growing their own will purchase liners or plugs to size up for sale later. The demand for specific plants, especially tissue-cultured and patented varieties, justifies such use. Are there specific plants or genera that have eluded your efforts to scale up, forcing you to consider outside sources (perhaps a reader may volunteer to answer your conundrums)?
A juicy question. Commerce is the sordid underbelly of horticulture, and the gardening public’s most ruthless editor, as nurseries are businesses – the growing is the easy part, and you can grow whatever you want, but ultimately have to sell plants to stay in business. Beyond buying in liners, some nurseries even buy in finished plants. One of our favorite past-times at plant sales is noting the wholesale sources of pots sitting on the tables of fellow vendors. Many of the plants we grow are slow to bulk up—either by biology (e.g, sterility issues or only being able to take cuttings at specific times of year, etc) or because that’s the way it goes when you’re two people with popular plants.
We certainly have plants that we could sell many more of than we can conventionally produce, but we don’t have enough demand to justify the quantities required by the tissue culture labs we’ve corresponded with (anyone know of any small, independent labs taking commissions?). We’ve sent plants out for patent trials, but unless one has the tumbler code of mass market desiderata, it’s unclear if it’s a good idea. In one case we could have made as much as we will in 20 years of royalty payments by having sold retail on our end during the trial period. Most of mass-market plants is simply marketing, with a buffer of patent protection. We know other nurseries will propagate our plants (and there are some of our plants that others have made more on than we) but that’s the game, as conversely we also sell other’s plants. But we are also constantly at play with plants and looking to create opportunities, which is part of the excitement and joy of a nursery. On some level, if it takes 10 years from seed sowing date to get to sell-able numbers of a plant (that you’re excited about selling) at $15 a quart, and shortly thereafter other people sell it too, how do you ever recoup the costs? Nobody becomes a nursery person for the money.
One of your side business is producing cut plant materials for high end floristry businesses. However, it isn’t founded on the usual suspects found in other cut flower farms. How do you two predicate your intuition on what may be appealing?
Our first rule for growing cut flowers is to grow what nobody else is growing. The second rule is don’t tell other people what we’re growing. It sounds catty, but the more people entering the market doing the same thing that we are means that it’s not economically viable to continue doing that thing. Pivoting is often necessary in any business, but those with good ideas often get the short end of the stick when it comes to capitalizing on their good ideas. We wonder, in an industry that has infinite possibilities, why do most floral farmers/growers predicate their businesses on other people’s ideas? Why do the leaders of that industry encourage ubiquity?
To your question, how can you have an opinion of what’s worthy without spending time in a place that offers context? Gardeners, above all others, have a privileged view on producing plants/selecting plants and playing with cut flowers (proto/meta garden)—it’s a seamless garment. In the same way we design gardens that have a point of view, we have to have some personal perspective or idea of what we think is beautiful, appealing or worthy in specific contexts. This is why our business is named for the superlative suffix.
In the world of cut flowers, finding what’s most promising also entails finding a florist who doesn’t think like the typical wedding or event florist. For us it clearly isn’t someone who would fly in boxes of generica, prop them up in foam, then throw the lot in a dumpster hours later. Without our artistic, forward thinking, collaborative partners like Emily Thompson and Joshua Werber, we don’t have much to offer the world of floristry.
As the planet pivots precariously towards an uncertain ecological future, more landscape architecture firms are forced to acknowledge the ‘greening’ of their overdesigned hardscaping and facilities. We are beginning to see firms collaborate with biologists, ecologists, and energy consultants. In addition, a few are prescient enough to bring horticulturists on their staff. At the same time, the number of specialty nurseries become less and less each year. Where do you two see your relationship developing with the landscape architecture firms that have invited issima to participate?
We’re honored to be asked to contribute to such projects. At the same time that some Landscape Architects are working to adopt the language and theory behind gardens (most don’t realize the over-complicated systems and ideas they’re promoting are really just what great gardeners have done all along), we’re hitting the ground running working with our partners. The world needs people fluent in plants now more than ever and we can do a lot more together than we can apart. In a perfect world, post Covid-19, we have an opportunity to rethink how we want to live, and what role plants play in the bigger landscape of our lives. Here’s hoping we can avoid a horticultural Dresden.
It goes without saying that the plantspeople world is only one degree of separation. Both of you have gone aboard to look at plants and search for sources to diversity your listings. Hans Kramer’s De Hessenhof in the Netherlands and Thierry and Sandrine’s Pépinière Delabroye in France seem to be European compatriots of issima. Despite the climatic differences, what are the commonalities do you two see among your peers?
Don’t forget Coen Jansen! And a host of Brits. We definitely feel a greater kinship with horticulture abroad than domestically, both in terms of plant palette and methodology. They are all huge influences and inspirations for varying reasons. Thierry’s plants haunt our dreams, Hans’ nursery is a dream, and Coen’s reaffirms that it needn’t be just a dream to be able to make a living as a small nursery at play with plants and without large patent royalty subsidies. Guessing among our commonalities are a passion for plants and perhaps a foolish or myopic decision to base our entire lifestyle and livelihoods on such pursuits. We’re somewhat forced to adopt a simple life, but now more than ever, there seems great wisdom in such ways of life. In creating a universe of questions and ideas here at the nursery, we can simply walk into the greenhouse or garden to see what’s most interesting to us at any given moment. No need to jet set around the world. On some level, spending too much time in other people’s worlds dulls your own point of view.
Given the current health crisis that has forced people into self-quarantine and nesting, those who lucky to have gardens are turning to them for mental wellness. Much has been made about how ‘non-essential’ gardening is as an industry, but it ignores its emotional benefits. Do you two anticipate a shift in attitude towards gardening and gardens after the crisis is over?
As two people who have endured (and no doubt will continue to endure) hardship and dark times, we know this darkness informs our dialog with gardens in meaningful ways—cultivating a definition of beauty is a daily mediation. Let us hope that in the same way we once called grocery workers or delivery people “unskilled workers,” and now call them “essential workers”, we might experience a change in thinking on the role of gardens of all kinds. If more people see or experience the benefit of gardens not just for our own mental and physical well-being, but for the health of our communities and planet, we’ll all benefit in countless ways.
What are your desert island plants?
Ones we can eat!
Visiting a specialty nursery like yours often leaves one misty-eyed and romantic about growing plants for a living. It’s an escape from the stereotyped rat race. What hard advice do you have for people wanting to start small nurseries?
Best to get a job that pays you to have a nursery as a hobby.
Thank you Ed and Taylor for their interview!
Interview by Eric Hsu with Ed Bowen and Taylor Johnston
Photos by Philip van Huynh, Taylor Johnston, and Eric Hsu
