It should surprise no one that this columnist became interested in gardening. It runs in the family. From my earliest memories, my dad, Bernie Schell, heaved on his big steel-toed boots every morning and came home filthy every evening from working in the dirt all day.
Dad worked in landscaping in the high desert area of Twin Falls, Idaho, for four decades. He started at a golf course and then worked for a garden center before becoming self-employed.
“I had a lot more quality control doing it by myself for myself,” he said.
Thus, Bristlecone Wood Services (BWS, like his initials) was born. My dad named it for the bristlecone pine, a tree that can live thousands of years.
“When I started it, I was 40 years old, so I knew I was the oldest landscaper in town,” he said. Unfortunately, it turned out most people were unfamiliar with bristlecones and didn’t get the joke. One customer went to write a check and asked, “How do you spell ‘gristle cone’?” “Not with a G,” Dad quipped.
“It was an obscure name all right,” he admits. “I thought it was kind of self-explanatory because everybody knows what wood services are. Well, nobody did, and I didn’t even, so I made it up as I went.”
Through the years, BWS offered painting and staining, tree pruning, carpentry projects such as building fences or pergolas, and landscape design and installation. He was a real Renaissance handyman. Some of these skills he’d developed at the golf course and garden center. Others, like painting, he said, were self-taught. “I had to hone my skills on the job.”
While he “was a one-man band” for most of his career, the rest of the family played support roles in BWS. My mom Becky drew the bristlecone logo and designed business cards and T-shirts. My older brother Jeremiah and I did stints as landscape apprentices in our teens. And, of course, the family phone was the business line, too. Anyone in the house had to be ready to take secretarial notes if a customer called instead of Grandma.
As a child apprentice, I dug a lot of holes, hauled a lot of bark and stone, and planted a lot of flower beds. I didn’t love the sweat and the spiders, but I did enjoy packing our lunches beforehand. Being homeschooled, I typically ate lunch at home, so filling a lunchbox felt exotic. Granola bars, apples, sandwiches, and the old Stanley thermos filled with a hot or cold drink, depending on the weather. There’s nothing like a well-earned meal break after hard labor.
Like any small businessman, Dad had to play many roles, from accountant to salesperson to diplomat. One ornery old lady asked him to poison a tree she didn’t like in her neighbor’s yard.
“I told her, legally, we can’t do that. I would be held liable. It made her mad, but so be it,” he said. “There were (plenty of) vindictive people who wanted to get back at their neighbors, but they wanted me to do it.”
Dad is a certified Cat Person and made many whiskered friends along the way — as well as a few enemies. Nobody would say my dad likes dogs, and dogs don’t like him either.
“I didn’t grow up with them. I’ve had some negative run-ins with them,” he said. “A lot of dog owners don’t understand someone who doesn’t get along with their dogs.” A friend recommended he try to win over his customers’ canines with doggy biscuits. This worked well until one day when he left his truck door open and walked away for a minute. He returned to find two very happy dogs and one empty treat box. “So I stopped doing that. It’s like, I can’t afford this, two more mouths to feed.”
BAD FADS, DIVERSE DELIGHTS
Over the years, he saw many home and garden trends peak and pass. In the 80s and 90s, everyone was densely overplanting their garden beds. “People wanted instant gratification,” he said, and their landscape designers wanted to sell more plants. As those plants spread and squashed together, they required extra maintenance — trimming them all severely or removing some entirely, losing the investment.
Another unfortunate fad in the Nineties was pruning every shrub into a monotonous topiary. People wanted to “lollipop everything. Just sheer it all into a lollipop shape, a poodle-shaped shrub,” he said. “And that’s not good for the plant. It looks stupid, in my opinion, and it’s creating work. It basically destroys the natural habit of the plant if you turn everything into a globe or a Dr. Seuss bush.”
Certain plants would become popular for a time, as well. He remembers a time when everyone wanted a flowering pear in their yard. It’s a pretty tree with four-season interest, but he got bored seeing it in yard after yard. With everyone following the same landscaping trends, “there are 10 or 12 plants that are being overplanted and a lot of cool plants that are not being planted at all. So, a broader palette of plants would have been better. Then everybody’s yard doesn’t look just like their neighbors. Same plants in a different order. … You have to have some variety.”
Some customers had bright ideas, though. “I always appreciated people that planted some long-term trees,” he said. “Big maples and oaks and locusts take quite a while to establish, but then they’re going to be there for a long time, for several generations.”
He’s happy to see xeriscaping become more popular in recent years. Xeriscaping is drought-resistant landscaping that needs little to no irrigation once established. It’s great in southern Idaho's high desert climate but can also be implemented in rainy Oregon and Washington yards to avoid summer watering.
Whatever the fads, he likes mixing different types of plants with an eye on the future. Flowers with evergreens, annual blooms beside generational trees. “Get some delight in the landscape rather than just some monotony."
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