It takes a lot of effort and talent to succeed in the nursery business, especially when competitors include discount stores. A local nursery business owner has to provide a wide range of goods, good advice on plant siting and culture, and after-sale support, if the plant seems to have problems.
One of our long-term local nursery owners is Dieter Wiesemann, co-owner of Garden Center West (11500 W. Fairview Ave. in Boise) with his wife, Celia. The business requires long hours, hard work, knowledge of horticulture, and close attention to detail, because the margin of profit in such a business is narrow.
Wiesemann came to Boise in 1960, sponsored by Fentress Kuhn, a resident of Warm Springs Boulevard, whose local enterprises included bringing a T-bar lift to Bogus Basin ski area. Wiesemann had not heard of Boise, Idaho, until meeting Kuhn in Zurich.
Wiesemann is from Lunzenau, a small town in Saxony, Germany. He had been educated and trained in horticulture, then worked in Switzerland for a few years. Wiesemann lived at Kuhn’s residence on Warm Springs for a while, and then in 1965, he bought four lots on Hill Road, and carved out room for his planned “Hillside Nursery.”
Boise was a small town in 1965, he says, where “everyone knew everyone else.” That location is still a nursery under another name and new ownership.
His business succeeded, but he needed more space to enlarge his inventory and parking lot. He bought land west of Boise on Fairview, a location then considered to be “way out west” of the growing city. There he built Garden Center West, opened in March 1972, and the following fall decorated lavishly with Christmas tree lights. It burned to the ground Christmas Eve 1972. The cause of fire was probably ignition by Christmas tree lights.
He quickly rebuilt, opening in April 1972, from which location he still sells garden supplies, seeds, bulbs, tubers, bedding plants, perennials, shrubs, trees, garden ornaments, bird houses, feeders and baths, and in winter, gifts and Christmas ornaments. Boise has spread westward, as the city of Meridian has expanded to the east. Garden Center West is no longer “way out there.”
In his efforts to compete with discount stores, Wiesemann carries only plants that will survive our winters. He guarantees his trees will live unless they’re damaged by weedwhackers or other machines, planted too deeply, or overwatered. Tree bark on some varieties of trees is surprisingly tender, sheathing the tree’s vital circulatory system. It may be damaged by lawnmower collisions, weed whacking or other mistreatment, causing the tree’s death.
He also has to keep close track of his inventory, because unlike some of the discount stores, he has to buy the plants he sells. If he has plants left over when the season is over, it’s his loss unless he can pot up plants and hold them over for next season.
Wiesemann was the first in the Valley to offer yellow potatoes for seedling potatoes. He sold Yukon Gold and Yellow Finn, the latter fingerling potatoes, along with the standard russets, Red Pontiac and other potatoes. He said yellow potatoes are the predominant variety in Germany, to the extent that restaurants selling French fries use yellow food coloring to dye them.
Yukon Golds look as if they’ve been buttered, and the bakers are even good as leftovers heated in the microwave. They’re now widely popular here.
Yellow potatoes are not the only yellow food Wiesemann favors. He grows two sweet cherry trees, a red for the birds and a yellow cherry for him and his family. Birds are not very interested in yellow fruit, including raspberries, until the fruit falls to the ground.
Wiesemanns have two grown children, both married and preferring careers in technology to the long hard hours in the garden center business.
Margaret Lauterbach: melauter@earthlink.net or write to Gardening, The Idaho Statesman, P.O. Box 40, Boise, ID 83707.
