Les Serres Neville rising from the ashes
From the road, one would never guess that the production greenhouses of Les Serres Neville were nearly destroyed by fire just over two weeks ago. Even stepping inside, a visitor might miss the newly rebuilt back wall and darkened, distorted edge to the adjacent plastic sheeting, distracted by a sea of green. Stepping out the back door of the nursery, however, is like stepping into another world.
“It was five o’clock in the morning when Cathy heard a boom,” recalled Chuck Neville, bending underneath one of the blackened pipes that used to run hot water out of his boiler and out to the nearby greenhouses. “She looked out, everything was already blazing, and I said to myself, well, it’s finished, you know?”
The space that once housed the boiler and furnace is now a blackened landscape of twisted metal, scorched earth, and mounds of ash and mixed debris.
Neville explained that although the boiler room had been a metal structure, the heating system was fuelled by sawdust, which offered a cost-effective way of keeping the young plants warm in the winter and early spring. Although not sure of the cause, the garden centre owner guessed that accumulated sawdust on the insulation near the sawdust hopper was ignited sometime in the early hours of April 15, leading to the blaze he and his wife saw out the window.
Between the subzero winds that morning, the heat and damage from the fire itself, and the smoke Neville admitted that he didn’t have much hope at the time for saving the plants that are his family’s livelihood.
“So then I walked into the greenhouse expecting to see that everything was finished, but everything on the floor was alive!” he said, “I thought, oh my God, we can still save this.”
Walking through the newly rebuilt back end of the structure, Neville explained that the family, joined by friends as well as current and former employees worked quickly to patch the melted plastic with some old sheeting that had been saved from a recent replacement. After that, the goal shifted to finding assessing the damage to the plants and figuring out how to keep them warm with no heating system.
“We got them covered and were able to save a lot of the stuff on the floor,” he said, explaining that a small propane heater was enough to keep the frost off until the following Wednesday when a more significant propane system could be delivered by a local supplier.
In terms of what was lost, Neville pointed out that almost every tool he owned was in a workspace at the back of the boiler room. On the plant side, he mourned the loss of nearly all the hanging baskets the centre hoped to sell in the coming weeks.
A line of the mostly barren baskets runs from one end of the greenhouse to the other, price tags still attached.
“Even if we were to replant at this point, we don’t know if they would make the season,” said Cathy Brochet, Neville’s wife, explaining that some of the baskets have been replanted but are no longer the sure sell they would have been before. “So then we’re working on it for another six weeks and then maybe we won’t sell them. It’s a bit tricky.”
“We’ll probably end up selling them for half price in July,” Neville said, noting that the baskets are usually a big seller for the centre.
“Everything was pretty severely damaged down to here” Brochet said, gesturing at an area about 15 feet inside the back end of the greenhouse that is now fringed by a blackened uneven edge. “Beyond that it was lighter damage.”
Within that severe damage area was the zone devoted to plant propagation where small cuttings were started. Only one small tray of those made it through the flames, according to Brochet, although Neville said that with the support of another garden centre in Deauville, the loss has not been as severe as it might have been.
In the end, Neville estimates that one third of the plants were lost, and that the resulting impact of the smoke and cold has put the rest of their production about a week and a half behind where they would usually be at this time of year.
“With all the help that we’re getting, we’re starting to move ahead again,” Neville said, adding that the family has been amazed by the support they have received following the fire. “The Eastern Townships is the best place to have a disaster,” he added with a laugh.
Although at first things seemed catastrophic, Les Serres Neville will be open in time for spring and will be able to fulfill all of its usual contracts, thanks to a lot of volunteer and community help.
“It’s been incredible the support that we’ve had,” Neville said. “We’re on track.”