Friday, August 12, 2022
CapitalPress.com
11
BONNERS FERRY NURSERY
Location provides a niche
By HEATHER SMITH THOMAS
For the Capital Press
BONNERS
FERRY,
Idaho — Bonners Ferry
Nursery, located along the
Kootenai River 30 miles
from the Canadian border,
was started in 1985 and was
one of the first nurseries in
the area.
Gene and Pat Andrews
purchased it in 1997.
“I was an environmental
engineer looking for a way
to get out of the city and still
make a living,” Gene said.
“We looked at 37 farming
options — from central Cali-
fornia to northern Idaho.”
He found out about this
nursery through Capital
Press.
“There was a picture of
this nursery in an ad, and we
drove right over here to look
at it,” he said.
The nursery grows about
70 varieties of ornamental
trees, which include decidu-
ous, conifers and a few fruit
trees.
“Our main customers are
in colder regions. Our trees
are ready to ship when colder
regions are ready to accept
them. Sometimes trees
grown in warmer climates
can’t be shipped to Montana
or Utah because it’s still too
Bonners Ferry Nursery
From left, Peter Koehn, Susan Moe-Shope and Gene Andrews of Bonners Ferry Nursery.
cold there when the trees are
ready to ship and they won’t
survive well,” he explained.
“We ship to Denver, Lake
Tahoe, Salt Lake City and all
along I-90 toward Missoula,
Bozeman and Billings,” he
said.
Some of the trees are prop-
agated onsite. “We grow crab
apples, poplars, willows and
a few others here, and order
very young trees from other
nurseries. We transplant and
grow those large enough to
send out to market,” he said.
Some come in as ¼-inch
to ¾-inch caliper in size and
are grown up to four-inch
caliper trees. Most are sold at
1¾ to 2½ inches.
“A four-inch caliper tree
has a root ball that weighs
about 3,200 pounds, with
its soil. Transport becomes
an issue, especially today
with high fuel cost. This
may become a market-limit-
ing feature; we may not ship
very many more trees as far
as Denver, since it now costs
$4,000 to $5,000 for the
trucking,” he said.
The trees they grow are
listed on the website: www.
bfntrees.com.
“We also post photos of
various trees in summer, win-
ter, spring and fall so people
know what they look like
through the seasons.”
He
encourages
his
employees
to
become
entrepreneurs.
“One of them handles the
retail customers and also has
some of his own trees that he
grows on his land. He buys
some from us and plants
them to grow for retail cus-
tomers,” Gene said. This
program helps encourage
employees to take a serious
interest.
“We’ve allowed them to
take a half-acre or more of
the farm here and grow their
own crop. Instead of buy-
ing some of the smaller trees
from outside sources, we buy
from our employees. They
enjoy doing that, and they’ve
all made money this way,” he
said. “They can take pride in
their own efforts.
“This saves us the prob-
lem of shipping trees in from
out-of-state. When we get
them here they’ve been on a
truck for a week, with about
100,000 trees piled inside
that truck,” he said.
Some are crushed and
have broken branches. “We
don’t have that problem
when we buy young trees
from our own employees,”
he said.
In 2016, Michael Powers
and Kathy Konek took over
the day-to-day operation of
the field and office. Susan
Moe-Shope joined the team
in 2020 to manage the office,
inventory and sales.
“I’m 77 years old and try-
ing to retire,” Gene said.
“Mike was already work-
ing here when we bought the
nursery; he’s been here 26
years and managing the field
operation the past 5 years,”
he said.
One of the youngest
employees, Peter Koehn,
started as Mike’s assistant
when he was 14 and he’s
now 22.
“Peter is very enthusias-
tic and wants to be a nursery
person,” Gene said.
The Bonners Ferry Nurs-
ery’s claim to fame is the
Perfect Purple Crab Apple.
“The previous owner
developed it a year before
we bought the nursery. He
had a reddish-green crab
apple tree, and suddenly at
the top of one of the limbs a
mutant purple branch stuck
out. He used buds from that
mutant branch to create the
Perfect Purple Crab Apple
variety,” Gene said.
“This tree nursery has
been a great experience
for all of us. We wish we’d
bought it earlier!” Gene
says.