“There were times when I’d pull 30 ticks off me,” Skillin, now 29, recalls. Though he says the ticks are something you get used to, the hornets nest he once hacked into isn’t. He had so many hornets on him he had to jump in the nearby pond for relief.
Despite those experiences, and his longing to be an art teacher during his high school days, he’s found a satisfying niche with the company. Skillins Greenhouses, with locations in Falmouth, Brunswick and Cumberland, has about 120 employees during peak season, but Chad Skillin is the company’s only landscape designer.
Skillin earned his degree in landscape horticulture with a concentration in design from the University of Maine in 2003. He started designing that spring and has helped to create incredible gardens for hundreds of clients in Southern and Midcoast Maine.
“You get to go to people’s homes and discuss plants and do what you like every day,” he says.
He begins with a consultation, during which he walks the property with the owner. The discussion includes what kind of plants and shrubs the owner wants, but Skillin also has to determine what kind of conditions — soil, shade, sunlight, water access — are available. He’ll make suggestions for plants that are compatible but also does his best to give the client what they want.
Next Skillin creates a concept sketch, which allows for the sizes plants and shrubs will grow into over the next eight to 10 years, goes over it with the client, and finalizes any changes. He gets help from the nursery staff, which pulls together the plants needed, and the perennials staff, which keeps him updated on stock and pricing.
The actual digging, planting and creating is contracted out, but Skillin often goes back to sites a year or two later to take pictures and admire what he started.
“I like to mix (plants) so there’s a lot of color and something’s blooming throughout the season,” he says.
Of course, Skillin is incredibly busy in spring and early summer when everyone wants to have the best garden in the neighborhood. He recommends that people call him to get the process started in winter or even through March, if they want blooming to begin in May or June.
Skillin, who has daughters ages 5 and 1 month with wife Sarah, is happy to be in a position where he can contribute so significantly to the family business.
Skillins’ Falmouth store opened in 1885, with Brunswick following in 1960 and Cumberland in 2003, but he recalls when things weren’t quite so busy.
“I remember when the building was so small,” he says. “I see how much work my family’s put into it, and I’m happy I can contribute more than if I didn’t go to school (for horticulture).”
But there isn’t a lot of time left over for designing and planting at his own home. When he can find just the right plant, like the contorted beech he has, he’ll buy it and put it in. If he had an unlimited budget and all the space he wanted, he says he’d create something pretty elaborate with lots of stone, more shrubs than perennials, and water.
He does get a break from the hectic pace of designing in late fall when he drifts back to boyhood and sells Christmas trees. “I get to pick out everybody’s Christmas trees, that was my favorite thing growing up,” he says.
His family opts for the more sparse trees (known as natural trees) and puts presents right inside the tree. “And it’s got to be balsam fir,” he says. “It smells so good.”
— Karen Beaudoin