Nursery tours are in full swing this week as the Farwest Show at the Oregon Convention Center gets underway. It’s a great time for our wholesale customers to solidify their orders for fall planting and garden center sales, and for reviewing and adding to their Spring 2025 orders. As always, Farwest Week is a time to reconnect with old friends and to forge new customer relationships and friendships.
On opening day of the show, our sales team stayed busy sharing information about the trees in our booth as well as our entries in the New Varieties Showcase – Red Sentinel™ Maple and Firehouse® Sweetgum. The trade show runs through Friday, August 23, and is open to green industry professionals.
It’s a busy week for us, with tours scheduled over all five days. To give you a glimpse of the tree business, and to share a bit about our customers, we share these snapshots of several customer visits.
Thrive Nursery of American Fork, Utah, is a great source of JFS trees and other top-quality plants that will, as their name suggests, thrive in the challenging intermountain climate. Though primarily a wholesale nursery, Thrive Nursery is also open to the public. Pictured in our greenhouse amid a sea of #3 VL Crimson Spire™ Oaks, Thrive tree buyer Kris Veenker was happy to see that plenty are available to meet the needs of their customers. This hybrid oak is a proven performer in their area and across the continent.
Crimson Spire™ Oak
Quercus x bimundorum ‘Crimschmidt’
True to its name, Crimson Spire™ Oak perks up the fall landscape with an attractive column of red foliage. Its bright fall color and narrow growth habit offer a striking picture in autumn. An excellent choice for street tree plantings and narrow sites, it’s also an attractive accent tree where fastigiate form is desired.
Fresh-looking dark green to bluish-green summer foliage is heat and drought tolerant and mildew resistant. Red fall color is inherited from its White Oak (Quercus alba) parent. Fastigiate form, adaptability to a broad range of soil types, climates, and varied growing conditions are inherited from Columnar English Oak (Quercus robur ‘Fastigiata’). Under normal landscape conditions, it is estimated to grow in 30 years to an approximate height of 45 feet and spread of 15 feet. Hardiness rating is USDA Zone 5.
We’re always delighted to welcome Melvin and Mason Moffett of Snow Hill Nursery of Shelbyville, Kentucky, to our nursery. They’ve been customers for around a half-century – too many years to count! Every year, this wholesale grower plants several thousand of our bare root trees in their fields and grows them for several years to landscape size. Most are sold to landscape distribution centers, rewholesalers and landscape contractors throughout the region. The Sparkling Sprite® Crabapple in the background of the photo is a good performer for them. From left, Rich Bailey, Jessica Hutchings, Mason Moffett, Melvin Moffett, and Nancy Buley.
Sparkling Sprite® Crabapple
Malus ‘JFS-KW207′ PP 27954′
Pink buds of Sparkling Sprite® Crabapple open to fragrant, pink-tinged white flowers that smother its densely branched, rounded head. Perfectly suited for patio, terrace or container culture, the summer foliage of this petite top-grafted tree is exceptionally clean, bright green and disease resistant. The show extends well into winter, when an abundance of tiny (1/4”) persistent fruits evolve from golden yellow to orange.
Growers and landscape managers appreciate its naturally dense and rounded growth habit that practically eliminates the need for pruning to achieve a formal, topiary-like head. Heavy annual flower and fruit crops promise beauty year after year. Top-grafted at 4 ft., its mature height and spread is approximately 12’ x 12’.
Inside Sales Representative Cathie Bown checks out the height and caliper of the #20 Armstrong Gold® Maples in our container yard. They’re among the outstanding trees on our Farwest week tour route that were harvested bare root last winter and containerized in early spring for fall 2024 and Spring 2025 sales.
Armstrong Gold® Maple
Acer rubrum ‘JFS-KW78’ PP 25301
A standout among hundreds of seedlings, Armstrong Gold® Maple sets a new gold standard for columnar trees. This namesake of one of the most successful and widely used columnar street trees improves greatly on the parent in several areas. Its brighter, richer fall colors that from gold to rich golden orange inspires the name. Greater foliage density and compact growth habit give it a denser appearance as it reaches a height of about 40 feet with a spread of 12 feet at maturity. Its tightly fastigiate shape makes Armstrong Gold® a perfect choice for creating leafy alleés along narrow streets as well as serving as landscape exclamation points. Stout branches with open angles reduce pruning costs in the nursery and reduce long-term pruning and maintenance needs in the landscape.
Mike Neenan, JFS regional sales representative for Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California, checks out a field of Burgundy Belle® Maples along the Farwest Week tour route. Grade-out on this field will likely be in the 5-6 ft. range, which are sold out. Plenty of 1” caliper trees continue to be available.
Burgundy Belle® Maple
Acer rubrum ‘Magnificent Magenta’
Spring foliage emerges with a red flush before maturing to dark green. Leaves turn bright red in autumn and deepen to burgundy in a long-lasting show of fall color. Of Kansas origin, this symmetrical shade tree demonstrates good tolerance of heat, drought and cold. Growing to a height and spread of approximately 45’ x 40’ ft, It is rated hardy through USDA Zone 5.
Gardeners! Please note that our nursery is strictly wholesale. To purchase these and other trees grown by our nursery, please use our Retailer Locator to find sources of JFS trees near you.
