What I love about this business is how the entire industry works together as one. The people. There is always someone to turn to with questions or ideas that are willing to listen. The nursery industry is like one big family. Most start out in the industry young, and stay for their entire career. The bonds and friendships you create are priceless. We all grow together.
I started working at Weston when we were a different place. We grew most of our plant material that we sold, and were pioneers in the plant world. Our legacy is something I am most proud of. We grew “rugged plants for the New England landscape”. As the business took a new model to a stop growing, it opened a whole new world to offer plants to consumers that we might not have grown successfully in our fields, but would succeed in landscapes.
What I want to accomplish is to try and bring back some of our nostalgia of shopping for plants at Weston. Some of my most cherished memories include rusty, roofless school buses filled with plants from our fields and rides in golf carts to pick the “perfect plants”. Revisiting sites and recalling the stories of how “I picked that plant for that yard”, and watching it grow into what I had envisioned. I want people to come here for the experience of choosing their plants to spark excitement and creativity again.
We live in such a digital world now that we lose out on the personal touch- All plants look the same on paper. Our landscape plans might start looking generic, cookie cutter. My goal is to create a shopping space that makes you think out of the box by inspiring you with a specimen that you forgot about, a tree that is “so perfect” that you just have to find a yard for it, or introduce you to new exciting plants you’ve only seen online or in a magazine.
My hopes of making my mark at Weston is to create as many stories as I can and help others create them. Bring back the personal connections and have you feel as connected to the industry as the industry makes me feel. I want to provide you with the most information possible to allow you to succeed at your jobs and help spark some creativity.
During this time of “social distancing”, I am so grateful to be surrounded by nature. Being outside instills the calm back in this scary, unknown world. I look up at the trees and see them pushing flowers and leaves, and somehow I think they are whispering, “everything is going to be ok, just keep growing”.
