Horticultural Awards

On July 10 at the OFA Short Course in Columbus, Ohio, the GIE Horticulture Group honored representatives of all 50 states for their outstanding contributions to the horticulture industry and to their communities. The recipients of the inaugural Horticultural Industries Leadership Awards represent several branches of the industry.

Two of the National Winners come from the nursery segment of the industry. Don Shadow, owner of Shadow Nursery in Winchester, Tenn., received the national award for industry development. Cammy Walters of Finally Free Ministries in Springtown, Texas, was honored with a national award for community service.

Plant Fanatic

Ever the giver, Don Shadow’s passion has benefitted the entire industry.
Saying Don Shadow has a passion for plants is an understatement.

Shadow, owner of Shadow Nursery in Winchester, Tenn., has spent his entire career seeking out and developing new plants for the U.S. nursery trade.

His endeavors have taken him across the country and overseas looking for plants that would thrive in domestic landscapes.

“I focus on species and cultivars that I describe as new and useful,” Don said. “These could be plants that are ideally suited to a particular location due to their color, form or growing environment.”

Shadow is not afraid to share his knowledge or pass along samples of new varieties he’s trialing.

Given his dedication and charitable nature, Shadow is the inaugural winner of the GIE Media Horticultural Industries Leadership Award recipient in the Industry Excellence in Industry Development category.

But GIE Media is not the first to laud Shadow for his leadership.

True horticulturist

“Don has made us all better plantsmen,” said Michael A. Dirr, retired University of Georgia professor and Nursery Management contributing editor. “His powers of observation and memory are, without equivocation, unrivaled. He has been at the forefront in promoting new and useful plants.”

Dirr said Shadow welcomes anyone wanting to visit or learn about his collections.

“He has opened his nursery to anyone who cares to visit. I have had many people tell me they show up at Don’s unannounced and he graciously tours them through.

“His engine goes day and night. The energy is contagious. He’s truly a remarkable man.”
Shadow enjoys seeking new plants in Japan and the United Kingdom, because he knows space there is limited. This is where he can find new varieties more suited for today’s smaller U.S. landscapes.

“Smaller spaces need trees and shrubs that match the scale of those spaces,” he said. “Large trees just don’t work in the smaller landscapes we’re now seeing in many new home developments.”

And, of course, ornamental characteristics are another priority.

“Colorful blossoms and foliage continue to be important,” he said. “I’m also seeing interest in plants with colorful or exfoliating barks, or branch structures that are attractive in the winter landscape.”

Long history

A fourth-generation nursery grower, he received a degree in horticulture from the University of Tennessee and started Shadow Nursery in 1973. He later served on the Board of Trustees at the university for nine years.

He’s served in many facets with state, regional and national trade associations and he’s currently on the Advisory Council of the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington, D.C.

He’s received the Medal of Honor from the Garden Club of America and the Individual Commercial Award of the American Horticultural Society. He’s also a member of the Tennessee Nursery & Landscape Association Hall of Fame.

The Southern Plant Conference recently enacted its Don Shadow Award to honor industry members that demonstrate industry excellence.

Shadow varieties

Shadow has helped introduce and popularize many dogwood varieties. His latest is Cornus x ‘Celestial Shadow.’ A variegated sport of ‘Celestial,’ it features bright-green and gold streaks on the foliage and also appears highly resistant to dogwood anthracnose and mildew.

Viburnum dilatum ‘Asian Beauty’ is a linden viburnum with dark-green foliage and cherry-red fruits.

‘Tennessee Gold’ is a new yellow-leafed tulip poplar. Liquidamber styraciflua ‘Slender Silhouette’ is a new columnar sweetgum that’s beginning to take the industry by storm. It grows around 50 feet tall but only 5-6 feet wide.

Shadow discovered the ‘Slender Silhouette’ mother plant growing along a lakeside. Struck by the unusual form, he took cuttings and returned to the nursery to root them.

Oddly enough, this variety was almost not meant to be. When Shadow returned to the lake a few months later, he’d found that someone had cut the tree down with a chainsaw to create a cover for fish.

Large menagerie

Many in the nursery field don’t also realize that Shadow’s passions do not end with the plant world.

He also has a collection of more than 60 exotic animal species he refers to as “alternative livestock.” These include deer, cattle, swine, birds, zebras, camels and tapir. Shadow works closely with zoos and other breeders, regularly sharing tips from his success as private breeder of these rare animals.

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Giving the Needy a Second Chance

Cammy Walters’ inspired charitable organization helps get people back on their feet.

Imagine yourself a homeless person or perhaps a recently released inmate.

You have no money, no house and no job. You desperately want to make a new life for yourself, but where do you go for help?

It was the plight of people like this that inspired Cammy Walters to establish Finally Free Ministries in Springtown, Texas.

This organization provides housing, employment and training for the less fortunate. Among the many divisions of Finally Free is a nursery that grows a variety of nursery crops that are sold at the company’s garden center an online.

For establishing this inspired ministry, Walters is the inaugural winner of the GIE Media Horticultural Industries Leadership Award recipient in the Industry Excellence in Community Service category.


Divine inspiration
The spark for Finally Free Ministries began in 2007 with a late-night phone call.

“I received a call at around 9 o’clock at night four years ago from a person that just assumes I have the answers to everything,” Walters said. “The person knew a man that had just been released from prison on a substance abuse charge and had been clean for two years.
“They had given him a mobile home and needed help finding some place for him to put it.”

Walters began making calls and continually ran into dead ends. She considered the situation this man, and others like him, were in. And that’s when the divine inspiration came.

“I sat down and the Lord and I had a conversation. That’s when he told me that I was going to start Finally Free Ministries so we could start helping people in these situations.

“If you don’t have a job and you don’t have a home and you don’t have a phone, you can’t get a job. Plus these people are often surrounded by drama, and most employers don’t have time to mess with all that drama.

“We’re building this business to assist people – get the trailers or other transitional housing and jobs. Then they’re on the road to independence.”


Not just a nursery

 

Participants in Finally Free Ministries sign a contract to work with the organization for 12 or 18 months. If they “abide by the rules” Finally Free provides room and board and a fair pay scale.

Participants work in all of the organization’s divisions. One day they may be working in the nursery. Another they may be making hand-etched glass or working in the pack-and-ship mail service division.

Finally Free also runs a coffee business named Caffene Fiend, which imports green coffee beans, roasts and repackages them for sale in the organization’s gift store and online.

The nursery is just 2½ acres, but Finally Free is in the process of developing a production nursery on 40 acres near Tyler, Texas. The company grows woody and herbaceous crops including daylilies, amaryllis, dwarf arborvitae, boxwoods, crape myrtles and bearded irises.

The company also grows a line of potted, “living” Christmas trees that include ‘Blue Ice’ Italian cypress, blue spruce, ‘Blue Cone’ arborvitae and ‘Carolina Sapphire’ cypress.


Success stories
Outside the people the organization is designed to help, Walters is the company’s only employee. However she does get help from a set of regular volunteers.

To date, she’s happy to report Finally Free has produced four real success stories.

“There are four families that have been helped by our services that are now living on their own,” Walters said. “Our oldest success story is a family that has been clean and on their own for four years and have gotten their children back, have full custody and work for another ministry.”

But was this what Walters expected during that conversation with God four years ago? Walters is proud to say that, during just a brief time, the ministry has grown larger than she ever could have expected.

“I’ll tell you one thing, I didn’t expect Him to have me build all of these businesses at one time,” Walters said. “But the experience has been wonderful. The biggest challenge I face right now is just wanting to do more.”

Finally free Ministries has definitely gotten the attention of people in Springtown and across Parker County, west of Fort Worth.

“It’s been really amazing,” Walters said. “I’m constantly being contacted by judges, CPS [Child Protective Services] and other Parker County officials and they say they desperately need more of what we can offer. They say they need for us to expand as soon as we can.

“But it’s just tremendous that we’ve received this award from GIE. I think this is truly something that is going to springboard us. We’re truly excited and think this will really help get the word out and take our ministries to the next level.”