This interview was conducted by Phil Pochoda, NAJGA member and NAJGA e-newsletter correspondent. Phil prepares pieces for the NAJGA e-newsletters from time to time under the title “How Does Your Garden Grow?” (Phil can be reached at [email protected] and Palmer Koelb can be reached at: [email protected])

Palmer Koelb

Palmer Koelb owns 24-acre Shin-Boku Nursery in the very rural town of Wentworth, New Hampshire. That nursery, which contains approximately 500 trees that Palmer grafted some 35 years ago (in prior nurseries in Massachusetts and New Hampshire), has been acclaimed by Doug Roth, publisher of Sukiya Living Magazine (previously known as Journal of Japanese Gardening), as: “…. the finest Japanese garden tree nursery in North America.” I have known and admired Palmer for more than a decade now, and thought NAJGA members would be interested in his JG nursery story (stories). Check out an aerial video of the original stroll garden, new stroll garden, and nursery on the Shin-Boku website: https://shin-bokunursery.com/.  Drone video by Peter Bloch (earthaerialproductions.com).

Did you always have in mind pruning your nursery trees in a Japanese style? Were you always versed in Japanese-style pruning, or is that aesthetic, and its associated techniques, something you developed over time? 

My father had a small Asian-style pond dug at our home in Weston, MA. It had peninsulas, a very natural shoreline, and a couple of islands (connected by a bridge that I constructed) lined with some large stones. My first nursery plants in Weston, most of which I grew in neighbors’ back yards, were standard azaleas, rhododendrons, and some common and popular trees. One neighbor allowed me to use an 8-acre lot of land that had been a Weston Nurseries growing field. They had moved to Hopkinton and the land had been left mostly fallow. (The remarkable Mezitt family has run Weston Nurseries for more than 100 years; the company is now controlled by a fourth generation of Mezitt’s, and they have just opened their fourth nursery site in the Boston vicinity.)

I turned the land in Weston into my first nursery, Koelb Associates, where I did landscaping, tree work (including, for better or worse, a harrowing, if occasionally comical, stint as a climber) and raised and sold trees. I had not yet developed an interest or competence in Japanese-style trees or pruning.

I sold the Weston property in 1979, and purchased land in Salisbury, NH which I turned into Salisbury Nursery, catering to a general public. I began an extensive tree grafting program there, trees that I later pruned Japanese-style.

How did you wind up in Wentworth, NH (a remote town even by relaxed New Hampshire standards)? 

I was dating a woman who had been a high school sweetheart. When we decided to live together, her daughter was enrolled in Plymouth State College, and I thought there might be a better opportunity to find some open land with river frontage in the Plymouth area. I discovered a 10-acre parcel with excellent loam and clean river frontage and that parcel became Baker Valley Nursery in Wentworth, NH.  I had previously grafted almost all the trees that I moved to that nursery and sold quite a few. Almost all the remaining trees have now grown too big to be sold.

Would you briefly describe the acquisition and development of Shin-Boku Nursery?

In my search for growing acreage, I was also looking for a good house lot or house that was appropriate for our needs.  So, I bought a 24-acre piece of land near Baker Valley Nursery that was an excellent house lot, high on a steep hill with great views and some bottom land that I could use as pasture for a few head of cattle. This property also had excellent southern exposure for solar gain.

When Baker Valley Nursery was fully planted, I needed to find a location for the specimen trees that had to be spaced further apart and root pruned. At Baker Valley, I had started pruning some trees in the Japanese/Asian style. The best of these were moved to the land below my new home.

At Shin-Boku, Japanese Garden Trees are grown for a few years in the ground, periodically transplanted or root pruned, and then planted into large containers, some up to 5 feet in diameter. Most of the larger trees at the Nursery are at least 35 years old.

Finally, since I had started to sell a few of the Japanese-styled trees, I felt that it might be appropriate to build a Japanese-style garden at the entrance. So began the original Shin-Boku Stroll Garden.

Original Stroll Garden

Shin-Boku Japanese-style Tree Nursery

Shin-Boku Japanese-style Tree Nursery

What or who were the major influences on your pruning style? 

Since its commencement, I have been planting and pruning trees at Shin-Boku almost exclusively in the Japanese style. I was mentored by Asher Browne in pruning Japanese-style garden trees. As he pruned some of my trees, Asher taught me many of the objectives, pruning strategies, techniques, processes and nuances associated with this style that traces back well more than 1000 years. He was, and remains, an extraordinary mentor.

Doug Roth, the first westerner licensed to be a Japanese gardener while residing in Japan, had moved back to U.S. and started the Journal of Japanese Gardening, now renamed Sukiya Living. Doug teaches a weekend pruning workshop for 10-15 students at Shin-Boku in the Fall each year, and I have picked up some useful techniques from those sessions.

There are no other nurseries that I know of (at least in the East) who have the commitment, the vision, the talent, and the resources to permit the mature development of the large array of Japanese-style conifers like those that populate the major specimen garden at Shin-Boku. Why were you willing to take a chance that such unique – and very expensive — trees would find sufficient buyers year after year in this general region?

I was passionate about the trees I was pruning and determined to make them the basis of the nursery. Characteristically, I did so with little real idea, much less research, into the potential or actual market, convinced that the trees I was meticulously pruning should and would find interested buyers, though it might take years for each sale. To finance this long-term goal, I did some garden designs and installations, soon to be supplemented by actual sales of trees.

How many pruned trees typically occupy your main specimen nursery? 

There are approximately 500 trees at any time in that section of Shin-Boku and more at Baker Valley Nurseries that I can bring over when needed.

How many trees have you generally sold each year? 

Perhaps 20 in a good year. The number varies from year to year, and because of the high sunk costs for those trees, and the consequent high prices to consumers, the local and national economies are a major factor determining my sales volume.

I know that staffing has been an issue for all Northeast businesses since the pandemic — and for nurseries as well. What is the size of your staff ideally, and now in practice?

I like to have one to two-full time people working with me in the growing season. In 2023, as I passed 83 years of age, I could not find any full-time help up here, so it’s been a little rough maintaining our usual pace.

Scots Pine Pinus sylvestris ‘Watereri’

Scots Pine Pinus sylvestris ‘Watereri’

Montgomery Blue Spruce Picea pungens ‘Montgomery’

Dwarf White Pine Pinus strobus ‘Nana’

Weeping Hemlock Tsuga canadensis ‘Pendula’

Which conifers do you favor for development in your New Hampshire nursery?  

The two-needle pines are my favorite and have proven quite popular as they mature and are annually pruned. These are primarily Scots Pines (Pinus sylvestris), (constituting perhaps 10% of all the specimen trees in Shin-Boku); Japanese Red Pines (Pinus densiflora); Bristlecone Pine (Pinus aristata); Jack Pine (Pinus banksiana), and Mugo Pine (Pinus mugo).  I have shaped a few three-needle pines as well, (Pitch-pine, Pinus rigida.) Five-needle pines also play a significant role at Shin-Boku, including several varieties of the common Eastern White Pine (Pinus strobus), though the majestic native White Pines of New England forests are much too large and much too straight to be useful in Japanese-style gardens. I also produce shaped Japanese White Pines (Pinus parviflora ‘glauca’). In addition, some of the bigger, pruned Blue Spruces (Picea pungens ‘Montgomery’) are becoming popular, both in their younger tamamono-like forms as well as in their later, sculptural, tree-like forms.

Scots Pine Pinus sylvestris ‘Watereri’

Scots Pine Pinus sylvestris ‘Watereri’

What are some of the more unusual or unique (even individually named) conifers that you have developed or maintained in your nursery? Is it true that you have declined major five figure offers for particular trees because you thought the purchaser might not be patient or skilled enough to ensure their survival?

I have a Japanese Larch that has a very different shape from standard nursery offerings. Much of the tree is positioned horizontally near the ground. It had grown in this odd position and so I encouraged it, and it – now named “Ilean” (sic!)– has become one of my premium trees. Another is a very slanted Scots Pine that Asher selected and encouraged me to prune in this odd form. (As his “reward”, that tree is now and forever named “Asher”). I have turned down several high five-figure offers for Ilean and Asher both because I am so attached and attracted to each of them, but also because I don’t quite trust most homeowners to care for them successfully.

“Asher” Pinus sylvestris

Are your customers typically owners of Japanese-style gardens, or do they tend to install their purchased trees in many other kinds of landscaped designs?

Most of my trees end up in Japanese-influenced gardens, though few are actually planted in completely coherent, traditional Japanese gardens. Occasionally, some high-end landscape architects will select a few beautiful trees for an accent to their designs, and perhaps add a few other Japanese garden-style trees and related hardscape features in proximity, though the whole garden displays a variety of styles and perspectives.

How do you go about replacing trees in the nursery that have sold?

I normally transplant appropriate trees from Baker Valley Nursery to Shin-Boku Nursery. Occasionally, if certain varieties of trees begin selling well, I will buy smaller trees of that type/cultivar from wholesale nurseries that I prune for several years before reselling.

Have you modified your pruning approach or aesthetic over time? If so how and why? 

I think that my approach to pruning has remained consistent over the years. I have found, in retrospect, that I have been able to accurately visualize the development of a pruned tree for many years in the future (while adjusting some pruning cuts along the way to take account of unexpected branch growth and the overall tree profile.) Still, I find myself surprised on a regular basis by individual tree developments and related issues. That helps keep me attentive and responsive.

In a Japanese garden, pruning of individual trees takes account of the relationship between adjacent trees as well as among clusters of trees and bushes, much less the aesthetic of the garden as a whole. Does the fact that you are pruning trees as isolated individuals, as stand-alone specimens not in their final garden context, affect your pruning decisions at a micro (branch by branch) or macro (overall pattern of the tree) level? 

In general, we prune our specimen trees to stand alone. When planted in a new garden, occasionally we will slightly change the form of the new tree, or of existing trees, to take account of the altered physical relationships among them, the reorganized spaces between them, and the transformed spatial patterns created by these associated trees and plants.

Has climate change, in particular, global warming, already affected your nursery trees and your gardening business?

Climate change is very real here, and the effects for me and my business are already profound. I arrived in my current New Hampshire area in 1985, and the winter temperatures then were almost the same as those of my former location in Salisbury, NH, which is 80 miles south. At the time, I was running a small ski area in Campton, NH in the winter. I clearly remember the night in 1988 when the temperature went to -50’ F. In those days -30 F, or below, was not unusual (that is officially a climate zone of 3 – though I have learned from experience that there are many microclimates in my nursery that prevent a single climate zone designation). I lost 4 species in that winter: Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides); White Dogwood (Cornus florida); Katsura (Cercidiphyllum japonicum); Redbud (Cercis canadensis) – all of which I can now grow confidently. Winter temperatures in recent years have infrequently registered below 0’ F, and almost never below -20’ F (so at worst now, a climate zone of 5). Still, Japanese Maples rarely survive over time here, particularly if we hit a brief colder snap in a winter. Japanese Black Pine (Pinus thunbergii,) the mainstay of Japanese gardens in Japan, as well as in many U.S. west coast states, does poorly in this region, done in by the cold and by disease.

Climate change, whatever catastrophic damage or extreme weather events it is responsible for in New England and world-wide, is at least a partial boon to this region’s horticulture community, already having dramatically increased the number and variety of viable flora in northern New England.

I have visited Shin-Boku now for 12-13 years. I noticed that even in 2012 your pruned specimen trees were mature, substantial, and exquisite – and those that remain have become even larger and more beautiful. Given the amount of labor required, much less the overlapping impacts of the pandemic, economic disruptions, and all the weather crises in the last decade or more, how do you personally maintain the perseverance and resilience required to sustain the kind of care the trees obviously each receive?

Even as I have pruned Japanese-style trees for some 50 years, my interest in and curiosity about their development remains as strong as ever, even as my physical strength recedes. I am, I hope, nowhere near packing it all in anytime soon. It is what I do and what I want to do, and it is a large, apparently permanent part of who and what I am, notwithstanding a disheartening succession of ecological and economic traumas.

What do you foresee in the near future for Japanese-style trees in local gardens? Or the future of Japanese-style gardens altogether?

I am pleased to see at least pockets of Japanese-style trees, JG landscapes, and related features being installed in many gardens, even if whole gardens in that style remain scarce in this region. I still hope to see an explicit renaissance in Japanese-style gardens as more and more gardeners are introduced to the beauty and the satisfactions of that aesthetic. NAJGA’s recent promotion of frequent regional garden meetings nation-wide should be of considerable help in spreading the gospel and the reality of Japanese gardens throughout this country.

Any final thoughts for now?

I want to emphasize that I love my life and what I do for a profession; I still look forward to going to work in the gardens. I’m very, very fortunate!!!

photographs by Palmer Koelb, Phil Pochoda, and Peter Bloch.