Field of trees

In addition to the natural scenery of the Swan Range, people who drive Montana 35 east of Kalispell are treated to the beauty that results from the hard work of Bob Fink and his staff at Four Seasons Nursery.

Fink and his wife, Donna, have taken 155 acres of high-quality Creston farmland and created a home for up to 40,000 trees, spaced evenly and in hundreds of aesthetically pleasing rows.

“People out here like it so much,” Fink said. “It could have been developed into a subdivision, but instead people say, ‘That’s a cool thing you’ve done.’”

Fink and his staff of nearly 20 are currently working more than 70 hours a week during the spring rush, keeping up with orders for at least 13 species of deciduous trees and four evergreen varieties. The business’ wholesale customer base of nurseries, landscape contractors and municipalities from around 14 states and Canada is growing rapidly. Four Seasons is also open for retail sales, so customers can stop by the office six days a week.

“We’re getting orders from big companies just wanting huge quantities,” he said. “They’re coming out of the woodwork.

“We sell to homeowners, contractors, ranch people. You never know who you’re going to get — a subdivision, or some billionaire who wants to line their driveway. We get all types of requests from people you’d never suspect want trees.”

Fink believes Four Seasons is the biggest tree nursery in the state, digging up around 7,000 trees for sale each year. The trees are cold-hardy and acclimated to a wide range of climates.

The Creston topsoil allows for excellent root development, which is boosted further by the nursery’s agricultural practices.

“We space rows for proper growth so they get the proper air and light,” Fink said. “And everything is on drip irrigation, which is a big plus. It keeps the root system condensed.”

He said the trees are dug with a tree spade, and delivered with the roots balled and “burlapped.” The nursery doesn’t sell potted trees, shrubs or flowers.

Fink said he wasn’t expecting to create quite this size of an enterprise when he started in 1999.

“I just go at it with a passion, and make everything bigger than what it needs to be,” he said. “This is probably more than what I should have ever done, but we’re still here.”

Starting up a new tree nursery — with its huge investment in capital up front — requires a bold entrepreneur, though. Then the trees need to be given ample time to grow to selling size, so it takes years to see any profit.

“Some years we spend $400,000 on new trees and irrigation and you might not get the fruit of that for five to 10 years,” Fink said. “There’s a lot of expense and speculation on what the market wants and the market can change in those years. It’s like gambling, trying to guess and speculate.”

The downturn in the U.S. economy didn’t necessarily have a big effect on Fink’s business, he said. One year during the recession, sales went up, then the next were back down.

“It’s switched all over the board, but things are definitely better now,” he said.

Fink had been in the landscaping business in Alaska since 1976 before purchasing the land for his Flathead Valley nursery in 1999. He first purchased an 80-acre parcel, then when the same family put more land up for sale, Fink added 80 more acres. He first started planting in the spring of 2000; at first mostly evergreens, but then adding deciduous trees.

“When we started planting it was just a bare wheat field that had been farmed,” he said. “We would bring in employees from Alaska, my main crew and me, but we were employing locals, too.

“Then we just kept increasing each year, adding thousands of trees every year since then.”

Fink worked hard to market Four Seasons, increasing business through advertising, trade shows and catalog distribution.

“A lot of it is word of mouth,” he said. “We have a great reputation, I would say.”

Four Seasons Nursery is located seven miles east of Kalispell at 3240 Montana 35. Visit www.fourseasonsnurserymt.com or call 752-2044.