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CapitalPress.com
August 21, 2015
Nursery woman adds retail, mail order to wholesale business
By JAN JACKSON
For the Capital Press
SALEM — When the whole-
sale nursery market fell in 2008,
Lucile Whitman knew she had
to do something different to save
her business. She decided to try
shipping 1¼-inch caliper and
larger full-branched trees across
the country to retail customers.
It worked.
“I cater to the people all
over the country who want
to plant ornamental trees and
shrubs big enough to make a
statement at the time of plant-
ing,” Lucile said. “I grow and
ship the trees in root control
bags and hit them with an an-
ti-transpirant spray just before
I send them off. They arrive
looking like they left here only
three minutes before.”
But she said she found that
the retail business is different.
“Unlike wholesale, retail
requires a lot more counseling
about whether or not a plant will
do well in a given location,” she
said.
The hot, dry weather has also
had an impact.
“The changing weather pat-
terns are also making a difference
as to what I can recommend,” she
said. “For instance, Crape Myrtle
is the hottest seller right now and
it is blooming a full month early
here in the Willamette Valley and
Seattle as well. These weather
changes are making a differ-
ence.”
Lucile was born and raised
CUSTOM greenhouse grower located in the
Willamette Valley with SPACE AVAILABLE.
Call (503) 576-0026
Whitman Farms
Call 503-585-8728 or visit www.
whitmanfarms.com.
on a small hobby farm outside
Atlanta, Ga. She had no real
farm experience in 1980, when
she and her former husband
bought a rundown 35-acre ha-
zelnut orchard in West Salem,
Ore.
“I had a doctorate in Latin
and Greek and I thought I could
teach at schools like Willamette
University,” Lucile said. “How-
ever, when I got here, I found that
schools here didn’t offer classes
in Latin and Greek. We bought
this place to keep me busy. Be-
cause I barely knew the differ-
ence between a dogwood and a
pine tree, the first thing I did was
sign up for how-to-farm classes
at Chemeketa Community Col-
lege.
“By the time the classes were
over, I had asked for a chain saw
for Christmas so I could go to
work on the place.”
That was 30 years ago.
“I still don’t like to sit in the
office to do paper work and an-
swer the phone,” Whitman said.
“I want to graft and prune and
Jan Jackson/For the Capital Press
Lucile Whitman of Whitman Farms stands in the shade of a mulberry tree growing at her nursery,
which features hard-to-find trees and shrubs. To handle retail sales, she transfers her office phone to
her cellphone so she can work outside the office.
pot, and to do that I wear my
phone on my belt and my ear
bud in my ears. I keep a pocket
full of note cards to write orders
on that I can then transfer to the
computer.”
Whitman Farms specializes
in hard-to-find trees and shrubs,
including many varieties of
currants. Affectionately called
the “Mulberry Queen” because
of her extensive collection of
mulberry trees, Lucile’s latest
project is researching crops to
plant on her newly purchased 40
acres. She is asking everyone she
knows for ideas.
“I’m thinking of trying some-
thing organic but first I need or-
ganic certification from the State
of Oregon,” she said.
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