Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, December 3, 1993 TAG: 9312030230
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL STOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: COPPER HILL LENGTH: Long
He's honored - really.
Just a little skeptical, because this prestige has a high price.
"We sell every Fraser fir we can grow, and we've been turning away orders this year," he said. "This is all a dead expense. As far as being profitable, it's not."
Clark likes nothing better than jumping in his four-wheel-drive truck with a visitor and cruising the dirt roads that twist and dip around the nearly 600 acres on the family's 22 tree farms.
All the while, he gushes out facts and figures from the encyclopedia of trees that he's been compiling in his head for the last three decades.
Fraser firs, he explained, are "the Cadillac of Christmas trees" costing up to $300 for ones more than 12 feet tall.
"I hope I'm not wasting your time. I just love trees," he said. "I could talk about them all day."
Clark and his son, Bobby, who run Clark's Hilltop Nursery in Floyd County, cut six trees this week that will be taken to Richmond today and set up at the governor's house, the Capitol and four other locations on the state grounds.
The nursery earned the right to furnish the governor's official tree by taking home top prize in a Christmas tree contest held at the Virginia Christmas Tree Growers Association's annual meeting in Roanoke in August.
John Torbert, president of the state group, said about 30 trees were entered in the contest. They were judged on a variety of features, including stem, shape and straightness.
Reginald Clark, 59, has been growing Christmas trees since 1961, but this is the first year he entered the association's contest. He probably wouldn't have done it without urging from his son.
"I've wanted to enter the contest for years, always thought it would be interesting," Bobby Clark said. "Dad's always said that if the governor wants one of our trees, then he can buy it like everyone else."
But don't get the wrong impression. Clark's far from a scrooge.
In fact, with his gray hair - usually hidden beneath a cap - red cheeks, stocky build, broad shoulders and deep, raspy voice, Reginald Clark would make a great Santa Claus. All he lacks is a beard and a red suit.
Clark, who grew up on a tree farm in Avery County, N.C., moved to Floyd County in 1958 to teach school at Check Elementary.
In 1961, he bought eight acres and planted his first trees. It was 15 years before he quit teaching and took up tree farming full-time.
The nursery has grown and now employs 11 full-time workers.
Clark's Hilltop Nursery will sell more than 20,000 Christmas trees this year, but that's only about 20 percent of the company's business.
Clark's, which specializes in large wholesale orders, also grows more than 30 other tree types that are used for landscaping purposes.
The award-winning nursery doesn't list its phone number in the yellow pages or have a sign identifying its location on U.S. 221 between Roanoke and Floyd.
"Our biggest customers already know our number," Bobby Clark said.
The younger Clark, who began working with his dad in 1986, said the nursery doesn't encourage individual customers, The award-winning nursery doesn't list its phone number in the yellow pages or have a sign identifying its location on U.S. 221 between Roanoke and Floyd. because it's so time-consuming. It's especially hard in December, when the company ships out up to 4,000 trees a day to destinations as far away as Missouri and Kansas.
"We would rather have one telephone call ordering 200 trees instead of 200 calls ordering one tree," he said.
That doesn't stop dozens of customers from up to 200 miles away from making their way to Floyd every December to buy one of Clark's trees.
Because they're so friendly, the Clarks find it hard to turn away any customer - no matter how small the order or how lousy the weather.
Last Saturday, for instance, two elderly ladies from Mount Airy, N.C., showed up during a torrential downpour and said they wanted a tree.
"It's pouring down rain, and they must have looked at 3,000 trees," Reginald Clark recalled with a jolly chuckle. "And here I was, following them around with a chain saw.
"They found the tree they wanted and said they were going to check the forecast again next year and come back during bad weather, when it wouldn't be so crowded."
Torbert said this was the first Christmas in several years that the official state Christmas tree was grown in Southwest Virginia. Last year's winner was from Fredericksburg, and the 1991 tree came from Staunton.
It seems only fitting that a tree from Floyd County, the unofficial Christmas tree capital of the state, should sit in the state's Capitol.
Torbert said he has no doubt that Floyd County grows more trees than any other locality in the state.
"We may well have more trees than the rest of the state put together," he said. "But I don't know that for sure."
by CNB