In 1961 Fred C. Darragh with the St. Tammany Tribune newspaper gave a great overview of the growing landscape nursery industry in St. Tammany Parish. Click on the article below to make it larger and more readable.
Text from the above column:
COVINGTON BEAT With Fred C. Darragh
Have you ever seen canned gold?
Well, I have -- thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of the stuff, stretching in row upon orderly row as far as the eye could see. I have watched, as the cans containing it were carefully loaded aboard huge transport trailers destined to fan out over a twenty seven state area in the first leg of a journey that would scatter ST. TAMMANY'S GREEN GOLD over practically every state in the union, as well as many foreign countries.
The GREEN GOLD. of course, is the product of the many commercial nurseries which have quietly, without chest-pounding or fan-fare, contributed a multi-million dollar business to the economic growth of St. Tammany Parish.
Commercial buyers visit our local nurseries in all seasons, eager and anxious to exchange good cash money for the broad leaf evergreens that are cultivated here. They come hunting Holly. Arbor Vitae, Crepe Myrtle. Juniper, Ligustrum, Gardenias. Magnolias, Photenias, Ilex, Cherry Laurels. Hibiscus, Azaleas, Sansanquas and camellias, and dispatch heavily laden transports to points as far North as Chicago (Montgomery Ward and other catalog houses are big customers), South to Miami, West to Texas and Oklahoma, and East to the Atlantic states.
The average citizen of St. Tammany is unaware of the tremendous scope of the local nursery industry, because most of its business is wholesale, and its leaders are entirely too busy to do much bragging on their importance.
AND THEY ARE IMPORTANT -- MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT THAT!
The several thousand acres in cultivation represent a capital investment of a good many hundred thousand dollars. even at the most conservative estimate.
Building is constantly in progress; tractors and other equipment wear out and must be replaced; plants must be fed, and watered, and babied through droughts and cold spells, and protected from "varments" of field and air. In every operation, the nurserymen's dollar takes firm root in local business, while the hundreds of people that they employ add materially to the general prosperity.
An overwhelming majority of the parish nurseries are state registered, with their owners going to Baton Rouge on one of the two dates set annually, for examinations in nursery management and plant culture, the passing of which will qualify their firms to ship beyond State lines.
All are members of the Southeast Louisiana Nurserymen's Association, and many belong to the Louisiana State Horticultural Association, and the National Association of Nurserymen, whose strong lobby (headed by an extremely well paid and efficient secretary) protect the interests of nurserymen throughout the nation.
Our nurserymen are leaders in church and civic activities, devoting both dollars and effort to the improvement of their local communities, and through State (two of which Covington and Abita Springs have hosted) and national conventions, have proven themselves extremely fine ambassadors of good will for their home parish.
All of which is a far cry from the year of 1903 when Mr. Henry McKee, popularly credited with pioneering the nursery business in St. Tammany. started selling fruit trees on a commission basis for a Georgia firm. Visualizing the possibilities inherent in the mild climate and generous rainfall of the area, he started cultivation of his own plants, and through a long course of trial and error, laid a firm foundation for the present thriving industry.
St. Tammany may well be proud that it can boast of what is probably the largest commercial nursery in the state, and one of the most modernly equipped in the nation, as well as what is claimed to be the world's largest "lath house" -- all of which I hope to take up in another column in the very near future.
St. Tammany Tribune, December 8, 1961
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Photo by Ron Barthet
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