From the Ground Up with Forrest Sargent (2022)

Pages: 276, Printing: Smith Printing Company, Editing: Marjorie Toensing

For Future Generations

As a child, I remember spending many hours looking through picture albums that my parents had created of family and extended family events . Faye and I did the same, taking time to make photo albums of our travels, weddings of family and friends, and other special events. Now, in the digital age, photo albums are becoming things of the past. I’m not sure that viewing photos on thumb drives and phones will have the same impact as paging through an album.

       As I slip into semi-retirement (some would say more than “semi”) with an interest in history as a critical path to the future, I feel that writing a book of stories and photos for current and future generations of Sargents seems appropriate and timely. I want to give them an “album” to hold in their hands that helps them remember and reflect on their past.

The Sargent family history will be intertwined inevitably with our family’s nursery business, which has been the major force in how our lives have developed. The horticulture business is much like agriculture because it is a total family endeavor with a strong seasonal aspect. We grow plants instead of food crops. It becomes a primary focus in daily family life, and disaster awaits if the business fails. How our family has navigated this treacherous yet rewarding venture will be a consistent theme throughout. Though our personal and business histories are tightly intertwined, I’ve done my best to present them separately, with our Sargent family history in Part 1 and our Sargent business history in Part 2. This book is intended to be more than a history of Sargent’s Landscape Nursery, Inc. It tells a personal history of how the business—as well as other significant events unrelated to the business—shaped our family. It is a telling of how our values developed around—and in spite of—the strong business influence of an intensely run family business. As a word of context, I am the third generation of the Sargent family business, so I am a product of this environment as much as the fourth, and possible fifth, generations are and will be. I have often heard it said that the first generation has the idea and takes the risk, the second generation makes it thrive, and the third generation ruins it. Fortunately, we didn’t fall into that scenario! As the stories will show, ours was maybe not the traditional path, and perhaps that helped us avoid that worrisome third-generation pitfall. I look forward to input from other family members as well as professional associates to bring meaning and value to this effort.

Forrest H. Sargent