Brian Maynard, professor of plant sciences in the College of the Environment and Life Sciences at the University of Rhode Island and long time RINLA affiliate, conducted a three hour tree identification seminar at Kinder Brothers Nursery in Bristol for our September’s Talk to the Experts Event. Kindly hosting us for this event was Elizabeth Kinder, the 4th generation to take over the family business since its inception in 1890. As a licensed arborist herself, Elizabeth manages the nursery and landscaping service, taking over the business from her father Samuel Kinder. After obtaining his degree in horticulture from URI, her father transformed the family land at 162 Poppasquash Road into a nursery in 1986, adding landscape design, arboriculture and tree healthcare to their already existent business offerings of commercial, municipal and residential landscape construction and tree service. While the bulk of her father’s work began with supplying street trees around cities, many of which are still growing on the East Side of Providence, downtown Newport and Bristol, the business has grown today to encompass a majority of projects for homeowners throughout southeastern Massachusetts, reaching as far north as Boston. If you go out to Kinder today, you will see the extensive fields where they have planted a host of various types of trees, spanning an array of ages and sizes, across their 16 acres of land.
Written and photographed by Mason Billings