Profiles in Business: Oliver Gardner: 4 Seasons Garden Center

Vermont Business Magazine, Dec 01, 2003 by Marcel, Joyce

Every kid in northern Maine started

out that way, Gardner said. "We would start school in mid-August for a month," he said. "Then we would have three weeks off, and all the children from ages four to high school would help the farmers harvest the crops. We would get up at 4:30 a.m. We were all equipped with special blue jeans, where old blankets were torn up and sewn into the knees. That's because when you pick potatoes, you crawl on the ground."

When they were old enough, Easton children worked in the spring, too. "We would go to school half days," Gardner said. "We'd be there at 6:30 in the morning and we'd get out at 11:30, and be in the fields by noon. We'd help the farmers plant the crops. So that would be three weeks in the spring, which meant there would be no spring sports, no soccer, baseball and of course no football in the fall, because you would be harvesting."

The potato money went for winter clothing.

"We were allowed to keep a little bit for having fun, I suppose, but after the winter harvest was over, we always packed up the car and drove to Bangor and shopped for our winter clothes," Gardner said. "So we always had a new coat, new shoes, new boots, shirts and sweaters and pants to get us through the winter."

When he was in the seventh grade, he was influenced by Lloyd Bridges' television show, "Sea Hunt." Gardner spent his spring potato money on scuba diving equipment.

"That was a treat," he said. "It was for diving in lakes. It was the worst god-awful diving experience you could imagine, because they were all mud-bottomed lakes and there was no visibility and it was scary." When he wasn't working in the fields, Gardner played basketball. In the summer, he swam in the Presque Isle stream.

"This was one of those idyllic, beautiful trout streams that float right through the center of town," he said. "There was a dam that backed the water up for half a mile. We had a swimming hole there, with a raft and docks that the American Legion built. Docks were supported by empty sealed up 55-gallon drums of DDT. So we were constantly exposed to every toxin you can imagine. Those are very fond memories."

Gardner became a good swimmer and qualified as a Red Cross lifeguard. "So one of my first true summer jobs out of agriculture was to work at the swimming pool in Presque Isle," he said. "I continued to work there as a lifeguard from sophomore until I was a senior in college." During the winter months, most high school boys continued working, packing and shipping potatoes.

"That was very hard work, and it was a tremendous motivator," Gardner said. "Any man or woman who worked in the potato industry, by the time they graduated from high school, they were highly motivated not to stay in the potato industry."

Because money was hard to come by, Gardner became an entrepreneur at an early age.

"You just learn to be very resourceful," he said. "For example, my brother had a pet cow, and I had a black Lab and a black sheep. In the fourth grade I would tie the three of them together into a mule train, if you will, and walk for countless miles - five or ten miles, anyway - collecting bottles on the roadway. That was spending money during the summer. It was good fun. When my brother left for college, I inherited the cow. I ended up selling the cow and the sheep to make more money." His mother's garden was Gardner's introduction to horticulture of an ornamental, rather than a digestive, nature.