Picking up trees from the nursery

By Katie Neis

Never has the fall color looked as beautiful as it did from where I sat high above the road in the driver’s seat of a Penske truck. Friends of Trees staff member Susie Peterson and I were on a mission last week to pick up trees for our first neighborhood planting of the season from Kinen’s Big & Phat Special Plants in Boring, Oregon.

The nursery was wonderful! Anthony Kinen sent us off towards the tree specimen garden while he loaded the trees. We had barely made it into the rows of trees before our love of all things green took over; we never made it to the specimen garden. Instead we walked through the rows of young trees, bright with their fall flush, and spent the rest of our time talking trees.

The nursery business in Oregon started in 1847, and Oregon is now home to 1,800 nurseries. Kinen’s Big and Phat originally opened in 2002, specializing in growing trees less common to the nursery industry. Sadly Norbert Kinen, a member of the Oregon Nurserymen’s Hall of Fame, passed away earlier this year. His son Anthony Kinen runs the family-owned business now.

Kinen’s is one of a dozen local nurseries that work hard to provide us with excellent quality trees for our plantings. Driving a truck out to pick up a load of trees from any of them is a great way to see first-hand the care they put into growing, potting, and delivering the trees. Bringing those trees back to our office for planting the next day directly contributes to getting those trees planted in your neighborhood.

If you’d like to help us by visiting one of these fantastic nurseries and picking up trees in a large Penske truck, please contact Andy Meeks at [email protected].

–Neis is Neighborhood Trees Coordinator for Friends of Trees.