Four Season Nursery

06/11/2026

Some Garden Observations

The Redbud tree at the nursery was in all its splendor a few weeks ago. When watering some stressed plants under the redbud there was a hum of pollinators that caused me to stop and observe the busy activities of the many winged feeders. This also allowed me to actually look at the flower of the redbud, it looked like a pea flower. I had not observed the flower up close before…key word here is, observed. The individual flowers are small and most of us look at redbuds from a distance and see a tree clothed in blossoms. This time the hum kept me just being a part of the redbud world.
In my readings I found out Cercis (genus name of Redbud) is indeed one of many genera that are part of the Pea Family a part of plant classification. How could redbud be in the same Family as peas you put on your dinner plate? Who would consider redbud and peas closely related? This makes it most confusing for us gardeners that are trying to make sense of the Genus and species and the reasoning behind it, not thinking it goes one step back from Genus to Family.
We can thank Carolus Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist, for the classification of plants and animals. Giving plants and animals a binomial name, classifying with two names, (Genus being the first and species the second). Living in the 18th century he wasn’t aware of Cultivars, which adds another dimension to classifying.
I have a note attached to a wall in my office to help me remember the ways Linnaeus classified; King Philip Came Over For Greek Salad. What does this mean? It’s how all plants and animals on the planet are classified; Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Family, Genus, species.. The one before Genus is Family and that is what puts redbud and peas together, it’s flower type. The most important for most gardeners of the ‘king coming over for salad‘, are the last two, Genus and species. When you go to the grocery store looking for soup, there are too many kinds of soup to choose, so you narrow that down to chicken soup, then you seek out a certain brand. Think of soup as the Family, chicken soup as the Genus and the brand as the species. You may be a gardener that comes to the nursery, sees a plant that looks nice and it becomes part of your garden regardless of Genus or species, others want to know more. Do you really need to know more? Well, it kind of depends on the gardener. The point being do you care what kind of chicken soup you purchase or is chicken soup chicken soup?
You come to the nursery asking for shasta daisy, it seems a simple question but it’s not. There are many kinds of shasta daisy; some are short, some taller, some flower a little later, some early, some with white petals and centers and others with white petals and yellow centers, all cultivars of the Genus Leucanthimum. For a discerning gardener this is important, for other’s, ”I just want a shasta daisy”. I’m sure Linnaeus would have included Cultivars in his classification had he known the direction botany would take us.
I had a gardener in yesterday looking for Pulmonaria (lungwort). I took her to the plant and she said, ”this is just the one I was looking for”. Pulmonaria have many different cultivars, some blooming pink, some a beautiful blue. This gardener knew just the cultivar she was looking for and it had to be that cultivar to match with the others in her garden.
Linnaeus gave us the way to communicate at a nursery that helps us get the gardener the right plant; Genus, species and Culitvar is the language, usually written on the tag. When shopping for plants, keep your receipts in your garden folder, it helps the nursery person to find the right plant to replace one that may have died.
Enjoy the diversity that gardening brings, it’s an ever-changing world. Observe the small things in the forest or the garden. The fun of this exploration is seeing the vast diversity nature has given us. We’ll never learn it all and that’s what keeps us exploring and observing.

06/06/2026

It’s all about Communication
I have started many new Nursery Journal entries, all half written waiting to be finished but this entry has bubbled to the top.
We’ve had issues lately that bother the energy flow at the nursery. An energy I’d like to think is positive. It’s with wholesale suppliers not delivering on acknowledgements and our inability to deliver ‘the goods’ to our customers.
Does this happen to every business? In varying ways, yes. The biggest problem for us is the disconnect between the triad of all retail nurseries: grower, retail nursery, and customers. If we get an acknowledgement from our grower’s we expect that material to be on the truck. When the truck arrives without the plants this is a problem. We give those that placed an order a date of arrival. Why can’t the sales people let us know of the cancelled plants before shipping. This gives us time to contact our waiting customer and give them a heads up.
Suppliers are busy as are all people in this business, it has to be ‘all hands on deck’, or you don’t make it. The frustration for the last few years is communication. This is the issue that prompted this writing and I think this is happening to many nurseries. If not, I want to know their formula.
Now our staff have to contact the homeowner that the product is delayed or possibly cancelled, which is never a nice conversation and it creates an environment of anxiety that could have been avoided with communication from our suppliers. Most of our customers understand it’s out of our control and others can get downright nasty – we promised and didn’t deliver!
If you come to the nursery, you will see we don’t just stand around waiting for customers to come in. It’s a working nursery. Most of the staff can answer questions, ring up a sale, answer the phone all the while managing the nursery with thousands of plants that need care. I wanted it this way and the staff is so good at multi-tasking, especially Jeri and she deserves no ones wrath. So, when she gives me an ear full from an unforgiving customer about a supply issue it’s upsetting for us both, creating anxiety.
We live in a world of supply chain economics and when you can order on-line and receive next day that’s great for you but that’s not a nurseries world, or at least not our nursery. Our nursery is about providing and selling living plants, very different from buying packaged things.
Continue planting to feed wildlife and provide beauty in your gardens and we’ll continue to do our best to supply you with the plants to build your gardens.

05/23/2026

I misspoke in my morning entry titled about Veterans. The song I recorded and listened to was 'Talking Old Soldiers', Old Man Joe was how the old soldier thought people saw him. If you get a chance to listen it will help you understand my reflective mood for the writing.
Music and personal experiences move us all and the combination helped bring out what I wrote. bz

05/23/2026

Thinking of our Veterans this Memorial Weekend
When the nursery consumers me I need time to reflect, if only for a moment. This whole week has been one of work consumption with not much time to reflect.
I went to a wake for a dear friend last Saturday. He was a dear friend and he had served in the war that was never a war, it’s very possible Agent Orange lead to his early death. My friend never brought up his ventures in Vietnam and I never asked. I have read many books about this conflict and would have loved talking with someone actually there, especially a friend who might give me the unfiltered version. But no. He, like so many others never talked of it but kept the memory.
I stopped last night at the grocery store on the way from the nursery and there was a war veteran passing out poppies for a donation. I couldn’t resist giving. Let it be known, I hate war. They have settled very little worldly disputes and they have killed so many that have given their lives for their county. But that isn’t what I’m thinking now. I did hesitate giving money but thought of my friend and what he had given up, then my wallet opened.
I was in the office when I got home from receiving the poppy…which is hanging in the truck from the visor. I was listening to some music I had recorded to a reel to reel and up comes a song I had recorded two years ago,” Old Mad Joe”. It brought me out of the office, which is next to the living room where the stereo system is. I realized this song speaks to those who have come back from war, left some of the only friends they had and now those friend have died leaving this person alone.
All of these reflections have come in less than a week and it has left me in a melancholy mood. Saying goodbye to a friend, putting money in a bucket to support more wars, and listening to a song about Old Mad Joe trying to come to grips with his loses.
I’ll get over it because today is a busy one with many plants to get into your gardens. But I don’t get over these kinds of coincidences. There is a meaning there and it’s for me to reflect on and find.
Enjoy this weekend celebration of all the veteran’s, their memories will live forever. Some of them are shared and many stay with the person who holds them.
Please forgive me of any grammar errors. I wrote this in a haeartbeat and I have to get to work. I just had to share my thoughts

05/20/2026

Look who made the list!!

Native plants are the natural choice for low-maintenance, healthy gardens that work with nature instead of against it. These nurseries can help you start restoring your own little patch of the planet. Our favorites include Sow Wild Natives in Kansas City, Missouri, and Native Roots Nursery in South....

05/20/2026

Date: May 15, 2026
Early Morning Thoughts
The serviceberries are just finishing their blooming, soon to bare an early fruit for wildlife to enjoy. They were bit late because of our cooler spring, (if you get a chance read Robin Wall Kimmerer book, The Serviceberry. A quick and delightful read. It’s a book that makes you see the world in a different way), Lilac buds are bursting and ready to bloom, Forsythia were beautiful and finishing their spring glory. Saucer Magnolia flowers are opening and hoping that a late frost doesn’t damage the large flowers they produce.
We unloaded a truck yesterday with beautiful plants in full leaf and expect another today with the same; plants in full leaf. I was awake in the early morning trying to figure out how to protect our new plants from Northern Michigan’s temperature fluctuations. First thing I did was check the temperature and to my elation it was 40 at 4 am. I waited until first light to head up to the nursery and check on them. We did have some frost damage but all in all very minor. We’re still not out of the cold but night time temps look good for the next 10 days with a cold night next week.
All nursery people and gardeners in Northern Michigan suffer anxiety in the spring and every spring is different. For the last two springs we have not had a frost from early May forward. But I remember a spring when we received a truck of Japanese Maple from Ohio, all in full leaf. It was mid-May and a few nights later the temps. went down to 23 degrees. I lost them all and it was heartbreaking, partly the financial loss and mostly the death of those beautiful plants. We had covered them with snow blankets but it just got too cold.
Enjoy your gardens this summer: flowers, pollinators, the scent of a rose, a peony or the many other flowers that are part of our lives. Gardening gets us outside to witness and connect to nature. For me connecting to the beauty of our plant world, whether in my back yard, at the nursery or on a hike in the forest, helps me feel whole.
I need to end with an, Oh My! I found out last night our nursery was written up in Midwest Living magazine as one of the The 12 Best Native Plant Nurseries in the Midwest. I’m not sure who wrote it or any of the details. All I know is the article really captured the spirit of the nursery. Whoever the writer was I thank you for the article. My wife and staff have helped turn a corn field into an entirely different wildlife diverse environment. We can’t change the larger world but we can change our world, and every day I drive into the nursery I am reminded of that.

05/12/2026

Date: May 8
Love your Plants
Spring is a time we all get antsy. After a winter not being able to get into the gardens, then having to deal with the temperature ups and downs, and 30” of snow in late March that set every gardener’s dreams back two to three weeks. Living here gives us the understanding that it’s something we have to deal with and warming weather is coming. Yesterday we had snow at the nursery. Just a reminder to not get too cocky, remember spring doesn’t end until June 21.
This is also the time that nurseries are getting ramped up and start receiving new plants. Most of the plant material is coming from warmer climates and in some cases from Oregon. These wholesale nurseries we purchase from are really anxious to get their orders out so they can start filling empty spaces with new plants to sell. However, we are still experiencing cold night, freezing temperatures and getting this material early is a plant’s worst enemy unless the retail nurseries have a way to protect.
We received a shipment of beautiful plants from Oregon in mid-April and they went immediately into our polyhouse. We bring them out when we know the night time temps are above 36 degrees…that’s kind of our minimum temp for these plants in full leaf. This particular wholesale nursery only ships in early spring so we either take the material or they sell it to other retail nurseries. We are fortunate to have a warm place to store and the workforce to bring in and out of the polyhouse as weather permits. This early order fills up our polyhouse. Seeing this material in our warm and cozy space is like being in a candy store…if you like candy. All the plants are flushed with new growth. We allow customers to walk through and tag plants they want, but none of it leaves our nursery until we know frosty nights are behind us.
When you walk through our nursery today it seems kind of half empty. Well, it is. All the plants you’ll see are ones we’ve over-wintered; they will look much like the plants in your home landscape. We ask our major suppliers, mostly from Ohio where there are major growers, to hold off shipping. Unfortunately, this ‘holding off on shipping up here becomes an issue. These nurseries are selling throughout the Midwest where no frost nights are not an issue. Our orders that Jeri put in last August get truncated because the wholesale nursery can sell those plants to a nursery not having an issue with late frost.
There is much anxiety in our staff working around these impediments. Many customers don’t know of the peril of this material forced in a warm environment and then shipped north. An example of this was a customer that came to pick up plants from our nursery last week, all grown by us and on the same seasonal leafing our schedule as the trees in your yard. This customer came in with other plants from another nursery and the trees were in full leaf. This happened to be a morning where I knew the night time temps. were going to be below freezing. I mentioned this leafed out material will be damaged with low temperatures expected over the next few nights. This same customer stopped by to pick a few other items this week and showed me pictures of how the trees survived the cold nights….all the leaves we shriveled, as expected. Does this kill the tree? No, but it’s a big setback that a plant will struggle with. And, it was all preventable. Keep your plants safe!
Just visited a garden center today finding Hydrangea with 18” of new growth kept outside last night and it was all limp, meaning all of that new growth needs to be cut off. The plants will have to start all over again.
Please love your plants, they will bring you so much joy. When purchased in full leaf this time of year be extra careful when considering planting. If they are plants purchased from the south, most are, or grown in a greenhouse, they need protection until frost isn’t a problem, usually around Memorial Weekend. Keeping in the garage will be enough…don’t forget to water them in the garage. If you read or hear that temps. are 36 degrees or lower, I suggest you keep them protected. It will warm up but it might be a couple weeks.

05/01/2026

Two tales that tell the same story
Have you noticed the colored nursery pots as you walk through your favorite nursery? They range for white, green, blue, purple. And then the old standard black pot. Some of you may seek out the colored pots for your own reasons. I honestly don’t see a colored pot when helping you find a plant. I’m looking for the best looking plant.
Colored pots are marketing. The plant business is now big business and the colored pots represent the investments the growers are making in researching new cultivars, traveling to all places around the world to find the next best plant, then to trial the plant, which can take many years before the plant finds its way into the nursery. This is costly and if the new cultivars or a new genus is discovered this is a market success, worth the investment. It doesn’t always work out and the investment in time and money is a dud. When a new plant is deemed ready for the big show - retail market, it most likely has a patent right (the development of a particular plant requires much investment and a patent protects the rights of the particular grower). The patent rights also allow only certain nurseries to grow the plant. Many times, this increases the price you pay for the plant until the patent is released. Once the patent time expires all nursery growers have the opportunity to propagate and sell to the retail market. This can bring the plant price down.
The finding and research of new plants is an old trade. When I first entered this business in the 70’s there was one colored pot, black, and were two Weigela in the trades (at least we had only two at the nursery). Now I can’t keep track of all the new ones and most are in colored pots. Hydrangeas breeding has taken it to another level. I could go on about plant breeding and colored pots but you get the message. It’s embarrassing when a gardener comes to the nursery knowing more about the newest plants. They have been reading the gardening magazines during the winter months and learned from articles or advertisements about the new and improved plants. Their questions are; do we have, will we have, what do you know about this plant, how big, what flower color… We are supposed to be the experts but we need to look up it up on the computer to give the answers, and that’s embarrassing.
Gardeners expect to find these new introductions/colored pots. Yesterday I helped unload a truck. A third of the plants were in colored pots. Included on this truck were persimmon in a colored pot - not native to Michigan but the colored pot tells the customer it’s a U.S. Native. I’m excited to have this plant in the nursery but it’s not in our native section even though it has a Native colored pot.
Mentioning this reminds me of what has happened with native plants. When I first started getting involved in native plants the only growers were those that actually went out and collected seeds, they germinated and put in plug trays. Their markets were a few native plant retail nurseries and mostly contractors or conservation districts repopulating disturbed areas. Because of my budding interest in native plants back then I visited these nurseries and realized their business model didn’t mesh with mine but their philosophy for the use of natives did. I didn’t sell plugs but I could grow on to a #1-gallon pot. So, our nursery became a grower of sorts, taking plugs and growing to retail ready. It was a shift in our business model but it seems to have worked.
Since making this leap the big wholesale nurseries and their connection to the native plant world has really changed. Now it’s big business and marketing has taken front stage. As mentioned earlier with the persimmon, big nurseries really want to get on board with the native scene, and it’s not local native it’s native to the U.S. Not realizing that a pot stating native to the U.S. is really meaningless. The U.S. is a very large country with many plant zones. To call a plant Native to the US is being irresponsible. It’s like tell gardener they can grow desert Cactus in Michigan because it’s a native plant to the U.S.
Are the big growers sending a crew out to collect local genome seeds? Most likely not, it’s too costly. So where does this leave the smaller growers doing the hard work of collecting open pollinated native seeds and growing. Well, if the laws of marketing tell me anything it will be a battle for them to stay ahead. Especially when so many cultivars of native are being introduced and labeled as native plants. This is marketing at its best, selling a native that really isn’t a native. You the public are being duped. Not at this nursery. We sell both but keep them separate and do our best to educate the differences.

04/28/2026

I made a comment in the my last Nursery Journal that Matthew Ross was, "off the wall". Well, I was informed by a co-worker this might not have been the right term to explain Matthew Ross and when I thought about it Tom was quite right. Matthew Ross is not "off the wall" he is "off the charts" with knowledge and goodwill to all; just wanted the clarify.

01/13/2026

Making connections
Flowering plants (angiosperms) and pollinators have co-evolves, 200 million plus years. That’s a long time to get to know each other! However, flowering plants and insects are ‘new kids’ on the block in geological time. Ferns, Cycads and evergreens, all wind pollinated, arrived on earth long before, were top of the plant web and didn’t need pollinators, just the wind.
You may be wondering if wind pollinated plants reigned supreme without the need for insects what was Mother Nature thinking? Maybe She got kind of bored and wanted to add some color to the landscape.
Mother Nature’s new idea, flowering plants, diversified at an astonishing rate with different flower types, colors, shapes and scents all to attract a new vector, not wind but insects. Plants are rooted literally to one place, they can’t pull up and move. But insects were the next best thing to move genetic information around and mix up the genes between plants, thus furthering potential variations, or diversity. This was not a one-way street. Plants had to make it worth the efforts for pollinators to move their pollen through the neighborhood. Feeding them nectar was the enticement; feed these hard workers before sending them to the neighbors. For flowering plants this is a big sacrifice – making nectar. A sacrifice wind pollinated plants didn’t need to make, they expended energy making copious amounts for pollen just in case it didn’t land where it was needed.
Flowering plants had a different idea: use insects to deliver pollen directly to the neighboring plants. Early flowers were predominately radially symmetrical meaning they looked the same to an insect no matter what direction it was approaching; think daisies, tickseed, aster. Continued evolution led to bilateral symmetry, think foxglove, turtlehead, wild indigo; only one opening was available and usually only accessed by a large pollinator to draw the hinged lip down and entering. In the case of wild indigo, a bumblebee will disappear into the flower and then backing out the bee will pick up a bit of pollen on its hind legs to carry to the next flower. Then there is the tubular flower design for those long-tongued insect and birds. All these different flower designs accommodate the ever-changing pollinator designs.
The plant and insect diversification and the constant mixing of genetic information gave flowering plants the ability to evolve quickly. Herbivores, omnivores and carnivores owe their existence to flowering plants and the pollinators. We owe our human existence to the flowering plant.
According to Ken Thompson in his book, an Ear to the Ground, a half kilo of clover honey (about 1 lbs.) represents 9 million flower visits and 7000 hours of unpaid bee labor (pollinators). Ken goes on to say honeybees aren’t the only important pollinator in America. Bumblebees, a native bee are as important. Both honeybees and bumblebees are social bees, building hive, honeybees above ground while bumble bees build in the ground. There are also many solitary bees very important to the food industry. Bee’s eyesight, somewhat similar to human’s but ranges more to the ultra-violet. They are blind to the color red. This explains why you don’t see many bees feeding at red flowers unless part of the flower exhibit ultra-violet parts. To a bee, leaves, soil and red flowers all looks brown.
We have so much to learn, observe and be humbled by in nature. For me it’s best to just take a short pause in the forest to see the intricacies of a Hepatica flower or Spring Beauty in the spring. Their flowers are a work of nature’s art and the early emerging insects need them. Really, you need to slow down or you’ll walk right past them. But, when you stop to really look, their beauty is something to behold and to be remembered so your next visit to the forest has you looking through different eyes.
Two books of great reading; short, understandable by us gardeners without a degree in botany, just good reading: Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry; Ken Thompson, an Ear to the Ground. Ken is a British writer but don’t let that stand in the way of a great read that’s very relevant to America.