Day lily czar packs up his plants
Jack Kent started The Potting Shed 26 years ago in Cayuga
JACK KENT IS PACKING up his tent, and his goats, chickens, pot bellied pigs, plants, a donkey and partner Paul Bolland and moving to Nova Scotia.
Passionate gardeners know Jack Kent and his wonderful day lilies. He started The Potting Shed, 26 years ago in Cayuga.
It was a revelation. Picture a big field right next to the OPP detachment, full of rainbow-coloured day lilies blooming all summer long. Day lilies were hot then; people collected them like rare wine. A special plant from The Potting Shed might cost $125. But he sold $10 ones too, and gave people excellent advice on how to take care of them.
“People still love day lilies, but they are no longer connoisseur plants,” Kent says in a shady spot at The Potting Shed, now located in Dunnville.
I interviewed Kent many times in that field in Cayuga for my TV show, “The Gardener’s Journal.” We would prowl through rows of day lilies admiring their form and flower. He was always charming and funny and full of boundless enthusiasm for growing things. He added hostas to the inventory and then peonies and ornamental grasses.
Cayuga had a drawback, though — clay soil. So Kent and Bolland found better dirt to dig in Dunnville and moved The Potting Shed there. Beautiful trees and shrubs were added to the inventory, and suddenly livestock arrived. Kent is now a premier breeder of Nigerian dwarf goats.
“They are becoming so popular. They’re small, easy to handle and they follow you around like a barn dog,” Kent says.
Visitors to Dunnville, he says, loved the animals just as much as the plants.
(Dwarf goats) are small, easy to handle and they follow you around like a barn dog.” JACK KENT Owner and founder, The Potting Shed
BUT 26
YEARS is a long time to be doing the seven-day-a-week work needed to run a nursery. At 65, Kent figured they had one more big adventure to take.
Last year they bought a renovated farmhouse with six acres of land on the Bay of Fundy.
The town is called Parkers Cove, not far from Annapolis Royal. It’s in a microclimate, according to Kent, a benevolent Zone 7 to start a garden.
The Potting Shed is closing in July, when stock runs out. So people are coming in to say their goodbyes, customers who started with Kent way back in Cayuga.
“It’s such a good business to be in, because 99 per cent of the people who come in are happy. They love plants,” Bolland says.
In 2003, Kent asked if he could name a day lily after me. I went to Cayuga to look at all the new day lilies he had bred and choose the one I loved. I picked a vibrant orange red. It’s still growing strong in my garden and in the gardens of many friends.
That’s the kind of person Jack Kent is: thoughtful, generous and open to adventure.
Their house is for sale, along with the nursery land. When they pack up their little circus and go, it will be one less reason to visit Dunnville, but maybe a new reason to visit Nova Scotia.