12 CapitalPress.com
August 21, 2015
Wholesale nursery specializes in cold-hardy plants
MERIDIAN, Idaho — Mer-
edith Carnahan and her husband,
Doug, started Jayker Wholesale
Nursery after they bought prop-
erty on which the earlier owners
had planted 19 acres of conifers.
“We started with the Austri-
an Pine and Colorado Spruce
that were already growing on
the place,” said sales manager
Carla Carter, who has been with
the nursery since 1988. “Then
the nursery bought 100 more
acres in 1989 and added decid-
uous trees and the first container
division.”
Her husband, Joe, started the
container division and runs the
growing operation at the tree
farm. An additional expansion
in 1998 added 110 acres.
“We now grow everything
from a one-gallon container to a
25-gallon container tree. We do
perennials, exotic grasses, and
all the shrubs for landscaping.
It’s all cold-hardy species; we
don’t do any plants that aren’t
hardy enough to survive winter
in our mountain climate,” Carla
Carter said.
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The nursery grows many of
its trees, shrubs and decorative
plants on 240 acres in Middle-
ton, Idaho, and Nyssa, Ore. The
nursery doesn’t have green-
house production, but uses its
unheated greenhouses to shelter
overwintering young trees.
“We also have shelters in
summer for plants that need to
be in the shade. They normal-
ly grow in the shade of other
trees,” she said. In the nursery
they go into a shade house, with
black mesh to provide a filtered
shade so they don’t get too hot.
Customers can look at the
trees and plants, or order them
online.
“We started as just a whole-
sale grower, selling to garden
centers, large landscaping com-
panies and re-wholesalers,” she
said. “Then we opened a 20-acre
re-wholesale yard in Meridian in
1993 where local garden centers
and landscapers purchase mate-
rial.”
Jayker grows plants for busi-
nesses that don’t have room to
grow them.
Jayker Wholesale
Nursery
Location: Meridian, Idaho
Owners: Doug and Meredith
Carnahan
In business: Since 1982
Website: http://www.jayker.com
Courtesy of Jayker Wholesale Nursery
A row of deciduous trees is irrigated at Jayker Wholesale Nursery
near Meridian, Idaho. The nursery grows many of its trees, shrubs and
decorative plants on 240 acres in Middleton, Idaho, and Nyssa, Ore.
“We don’t do retail sales to
homeowners; we just sell to the
outlets who sell to them,” she
said. “We ship to garden centers
in Montana, Wyoming, South
Dakota, Colorado, Utah, New
Mexico, Nevada and Oregon,
and occasionally Washington
state. Most of our plants can
grow anywhere in the cooler re-
gions of the West,” she said.
Shrubs utilized for land-
scaping include lilacs, snowball
bush, spirea, currents, other
common shrubs and small trees.
“There are hundreds of
these, and we grow the ones that
thrive in zones 2, 3 and 4,” she
said. The USDA plant hardiness
zones and sub-zones go from 1
to 13, based on average annual
minimum temperatures.
Jayker also grows syringa,
Idaho’s state flower.
“We don’t actually grow
the native variety because it
doesn’t propagate very well.
The most popular one we sell
is called Minnesota snowflake.
It’s essentially the same plant
but is just a little hardier. It’s
tough to get the native ones
to grow in a new setting,” she
explained.
“We sell some flowers but
we don’t grow annuals like
zinnia or marigold,” Carter
said. “We do all the perennials
like lupine, daisies, delphin-
ium, day lilies and lavenders
and ornamental landscaping
grasses.”
Carla enjoys working at the
nursery. “I used to work at a
garden center here in town, and
bought our plants from Jayker.
Then I married the container
grower.”
She and her husband own
part of the land at Middleton,
where the trees are grown.
“We enjoy working with
plants and living in the country
where it’s quiet and peaceful,”
she said.
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For the Capital Press
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By HEATHER SMITH THOMAS