Boundary County No. 1 in Idaho for nursery stock acerage

As far back as 1997, Boundary County has ranked No. 1 in Idaho for the number of acres in nursery stock.

Stephen Acker, president of the Kootenai Valley Nursery Growers Association, doesn’t foresee continued growth for the county’s nursery industry.

“The market has crashed and there’s a lot of extra surplus,” Acker said.

According to the Ag Census done every five years in Idaho, the county had 629 acres of nursery stock in 1997. The acreage jumped to 1,127 in 2002 and 1,574 in 2007, said Jennifer Jensen with University of Idaho Boundary County Extension in Bonners Ferry.

Boundary County was No. 2 for nursery stock sales in 2007 with $10.2 million. Ada County, which includes the Boise area, was No. 1 in sales with $23 million and No. 2 in acreage with 1,205 acres.

The nursery stock in Boundary County is mostly ornamental and woody plant species including Colorado blue spruce, aspen and maples, Jensen said.

She believes the county’s good agricultural land supports the growth of ornamental trees.

As for the industry’s future, Jensen said it’s hard to say what to expect.

“I would imagine that it does have a viable future,” she said. “I think the value of horticulture is growing in all areas, so once the economy can get back to where it was. There’s definitely value added to properties that have nice landscaping around them.”

The nursery industry in the county was at its peak in 2007 and 2008, said Acker, who manages Circle D Farms on McArthur Lake Road near Naples.

“We couldn’t grow enough material to supply the market,” Acker said. “Anything we had was sold.”

Farmers doubled the size of their operations and then the market crashed, leaving a surplus of trees.

“Now those glory days are gone,” he said.

Acker said in the last few years, local tree farmers have seen a 30 percent to 70 percent drop in sales due to the economy.

So far, he doesn’t know of any nurseries that have gone out of business, but he expects it will happen.

“We have a lot of ma and pa operations that have one or two acres who contract for somebody else to sell their material,” Acker said.

Acker wasn’t surprised to hear Boundary County leads Idaho with nursery stock acreage.

“I was in Colorado for 29 years and managed a retail nursery,” he said. “We drove up here every hear to select trees. The climate is so similar to Colorado so the trees had no problem transplanting them there. And the quality of growers here is excellent.”