Florine Turnbull of Juniper New Brunswick started her first summer job as a student in 1967. 50 years later, she is still working at the same place.
“It’s like a family here,” Turnbull said of the Juniper Tree Nursery, a J.D. Irving Woodlands operation celebrating its 60th year this year. The nursery opened in 1957 and was already 10 years old when Florine started as a “weeder” in the seedling beds. Then she worked as a seedling planter in the transplant fields. “It was good hard work and long days, and we didn’t have air-conditioned offices like we do today”, she laughed. Today, Florine supervises greenhouse thinning and monitors seedling growth quality.
Andrew Cote was also born and raised in Juniper; he started at the Juniper nursery in 1972.
“I jumped in to any job they asked me to do and I really enjoyed it.” His first job was pulling up 3-4 year old transplant trees that were then bundled up for bareroot planting in the forest. He was also involved in drying cones and extracting seeds during the winter months in Juniper. Today, Andrew supervises the irrigation and fertilizing care in the greenhouses
In those early days when Florine and Andrew were working together, the Juniper Tree Nursery was producing 4-5 million bareroot seedlings each year. Today, with technology investments and over 40 years of seed and tree improvement, the nursery produces up to 24 million seedlings each year.
Still with all the production improvements over the years, both Florine and Andrew love the simplicity of planting trees and watching them grow. Juniper is the small closely-knit community where Florine and Andrew raised their families and around 700 million seedlings that are today’s growing forests in Maine, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
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