From learning about houseplants or planning a vegetable garden to growing kitchen herbs or even exploring the world of beekeeping, Black Forest Nursery in Boscawen offers a broad array of free weekend classes.

In an effort to prioritize people as much as plants, the nursery provides year-round lessons for community members – with or without a green thumb – to learn alongside one another.

“We’ve wanted to offer more experiences to people who are coming in, to be able to not just come in and buy plants, but also to spend the day with friends and family members and just have a communal place to go,” said events coordinator Isabel Burley.

The nursery, founded over four decades ago by Bob and Nancy Towle and now owned by their daughter Suzanne, offers consultation, delivery, and installation services while hosting fun events, such as a summer outdoor artists exhibition or an Easter egg hunt. 

“We want to make memories for people,” said Haley Page, who oversees sales and marketing. “We want to create an experience for people here at our nursery.”

The free classes, which take place mostly on Saturdays throughout the year, offer anyone interested a chance to learn something new, while the nursery’s selection of paid hands-on workshops — new in the past few months — allows people to dive deeper and walk away with a plant of their own. From the ins and outs of starting a succulent garden or hands-on Bonsai trimming, these niche workshop topics aim to fill a range of interests.

“We offer a lot of different things for people to be able to, with their budget in mind, be able to be as independent, as hands-on as they want, or we offer a full design service, and we even deliver and install so it can be as hands-on or hands-off as a customer wants,” Page said. “No matter the project, big or small, we want to be there to help them navigate that, whatever way that is.”

Each member of the nursery’s staff has their own areas of expertise. They aim to build their classes and workshops around these specialties while incorporating participant desires to explore certain subjects.

“We want people to feel like they’re empowered to do their own gardening and not have it be a really overwhelming thing that they just don’t know where to start,” Burley said.

Upcoming Saturday free classes include Principles of Permaculture (March 1, 10 a.m.), Houseplant Propagation 101 (March 8, 10 a.m.), Garden Design Basics (March 15, 10 a.m.) and Invasive Plants Management (March 22, 10 a.m.). The nursery will also host two paid hands-on workshops in March, one on creating air plant terrariums (Sunday, March 9, 10 a.m.) and another on Bonsai basics (Sunday, March 23, 10 a.m. or 3 p.m.).

The free classes require no registration, while the hands-on workshops have a registration form online. To learn more, visit blackforestnursery.com.

 

Rachel Wachman can be reached at rwachman@cmoni tor. com