Where Is It? Answer
The tall chimney on Rockwater Boulevard that’s so easily seen from the Arkansas River Trail in North Little Rock was the incinerator smokestack for Jos. W. Vestal & Son, a florist, vineyard and orchard operation from the late-19th century through the 1960s. It was advertised as “the South’s largest rose nursery.”
Vestal sold fruit trees, bedding plants, vegetables, seeds, cut flowers … everything from abutilon and artichokes to a special Southern mix of lawngrass seeds. Vestal’s roses shipped around the nation.
According to the University of Central Arkansas Archives’ description of its Vestal Nursery Collection, and Cary Bradburn’s 2004 history of North Little Rock, On the Opposite Shore, Joseph Wysong Vestal and wife Josephine began their nursery business in Indiana in the 1860s. In 1880, they moved to Arkansas, buying 68 acres in Baring Cross, prime farmland on the banks of the Arkansas.
At one point they owned 220 acres. Son Charles joined the business in 1893, eventually handing it off to his sons.
Vestal’s employed 50 men and women on its farm, in greenhouses and the flower shop. It was the city’s second-largest employer, behind the railroad. Debris was burned in the chimney, which in the winter also helped heat the greenhouses.
To see a digital replica of Vestal’s spring 1925 catalog, go to archive.org/details/ CAT31318288.