Posts Tagged ‘Japanese Maple rescue’

080228 – Our personal business in the news

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

– We make our living owning and operating a wholesale/retail nursery business here in the Pacific Northwest corner of the U.S. Recently, we rescued a large Japanese Maple from the chain saws and transported it back here to our nursery. A local paper came out that day and did a story on what it takes to rescue big trees and the story came out in today’s Everett’s Herald Newspaper.

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Transplanting big trees is a labor of love for Monroe nursery owner

The thieves were smart enough to recognize that the old Japanese maple in a Mercer Island yard was worth thousands.

That’s where the smarts ended.

The tree probably looked like an easy haul. It had been dug up, its roots neatly packaged into a burlap ball for a move the next day. But the Japanese maple was a lot heavier than its graceful bare limbs suggested, weighing in about 2,000 pounds.

“They were stupid,” said Sharon Ronsse, the nursery owner coordinating the move. “They tried to move it, broke the root ball. It took five years of babying to recover it.”

Transplanting big old trees involves more than shovels and a big truck. It requires skill, patience, the right conditions and often thousands of dollars. It’s risky — for the tree and the mover. Only a handful of businesses in Snohomish County do it.

Ronsse’s company, Woods Creek Wholesale Nursery in Monroe, is one of them. The nursery, which she co-owns with husband Dennis Gallagher, sells 500 kinds of plants and trees. But it’s the old Japanese maples and other special specimens the business salvages, often from yards where homeowners don’t like the trees or they have become too big.

Ronsse considers what she does a rescue operation, since the alternative is usually cutting down the tree. She does it, she said, more for altruistic reasons than the cash. Japanese maples are a passion: She loves the layering, the coloring and the textures. They’re living beings that should be treated accordingly, she said.

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080214 – Moving a big Japanese Maple

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

My wife and I make our living running a wholesale/retail nursery (www.woodscreeknursery.com). Yes, I know selling plants and trees sounds miles off from most of what I Blog about here on Samadhisoft but it’s true – it is what we do to make our money.

Digging it out.One of the specialty things we do is to occasionally rescue Japanese Maples. Today and yesterday, we rescued a large one from a yard in Lake Stevens about 10 miles away and brought it here to our nursery. Lifting it up.I say, ‘we’ did it but in truth my wife and I just supervised and all of the hard and skilled work was done our friend and business associate Manuel Rodriguez along with the very able assistance of two workers from our nursery; Jesus and Dino.

Transporting it.Along the way, we met a photographer and a reporter from the Herald in Everett, Washington. These two folks came out to do a story for the paper on rescuing Japanese Maples. So, that was a lot of fun for us and great advertising as well.Taking it off at the nursery.   My, that is HEAVY!

Everything went well, thanks to the skill of the people involved, and the tree is here now in our nursery safe and sound. Now, I can get back to all that pesky accounting that piled up while I was off in new Zealand.
In it’s new home and ready for spring sales.Cheers!