History

Sylvan Nursery began as a Christmas tree farm. In 1968, 40 acres of land was purchased near Laurel, Montana. Trees were planted each year so that their would be a continuing inventory of Christmas trees. Since it takes about seven years before trees can be harvested, the owner continued his full time job during this development stage. When Christmas tree sales began, customers started asking if they could come in the Spring and get trees for landscaping their yards. So we began selling trees in the Spring and Fall for this purpose.

After a few years, we began thinking about a regular nursery store closer to Billings where we could sell a wider range of plants the entire season. This led to the purchase of 3.5 acres of land in 1978 on the end of Broadwater Avenue near Shiloh Road. We developed this over the years into a full service nursery and landscaping business.

At first we operated only as a retail nursery and only did a little planting as a service for customers. The demand from customers led to full landscaping services, including design and installation of lawn sprinkler systems. We gradually worked our way into doing larger commercial work. The retail nursery also continued to develop. We constructed our first greenhouse (30 ft x 96 ft) in 1982. Needing more space, we constructed a second greenhouse (56 ft x 96 ft) in 1987.

The owner's son grew up with the business and became interested in it. As preparation for joining the business, he attended Montana State University, majoring in horticulture and landscape design. He graduated and joined the business full time in 1989. He has taken over the position that his father previously held, general manager.

Faith Chapel, a church, purchased property next to the nursery a few years back. In 1989 the church approached the nursery in regard to selling the property since they needed room for expansion. In March 1990 a transaction was completed which gave Sylvan Nursery 3.5 acres of land at 1720 Shiloh Road. We moved to this location in 1991.

Plans for the new nursery property included a regular store building which house the offices for the business as well as about 1500 square feet of retail space for expanding the sale of non-plant material in a full garden center store. Facilities were also developed to sell bulk merchandise, such as, decorative bark and rock. The overall goal of this move was to upgrade the entire business to make its facilities more attractive and efficient, to expand the product line, to attract more customers.

In 1994 we ventured into the lawn maintenance business. We started this part of our business because we were tired of building beautiful landscapes and then watching them deteriorate over the years. We felt there was a need for a very professional lawn maintenance firm in Billings.

During the 1996 season we felt the retail facilities were reaching their capacity. We started to talk about improvements. Plans were finalized in 1997 and work began in the fall for a new greenhouse. The major part of the improvements were finished for the 1998 season, but some of the work will continue into the future.

In 2000 Sylvan Nursery joined a buying group for independent garden centers called Home and Garden Showplace.

During the winter of 2001 offices were added on the second floor. The first floor sales area was remodeled and expanded for more gift products. Also, a shop for the landscape division was built in the back. The parking lot was expanded to the south.

In summary, Sylvan Nursery is a complete nursery and landscaping business. Its property is used as a full service retail nursery and the base of operation for its landscape and lawn maintenance business. The business includes:

1. Full service retail nursery
2. Landscape design
3. Irrigation design
4. Landscape construction
5. Irrigation construction
6. Lawn maintenance
7. Snow removal

Our philosophy here at Sylvan Nursery is to provide our customers with the highest quality plants and customer service that we can. We pride ourselves in being able to provide our customers anything they need to build their landscape from the design work to the installation. We are the only company in Billings and one of only a few in the region that provide all these services. Sylvan Nursery is an independent garden center and we will survive the 'the big box store era' by filling our niche and providing the ultimate in personal service.

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