Lawyer Nursery

Lawyer Nursery is a family business founded by David and Esther Lawyer in 1959 in the Clark Fork River Valley near Plains, Montana. Currently the wholesale bareroot nursery is owned and managed by John Lawyer. We have more than 500 acres of prime nursery land in addition to our office, packing sheds and warehouses.

At Plains, we produce deciduous seedlings and transplants, rootstocks, shrubs and conifers. Our Plains climate is USDA Plant Hardiness Zone 4. Soils range from sandy loam to a sandy clay loam with a normal growing season of 100 days.

In 1988 our business expanded to Olympia, Washington. Facilities include 175 acres of rich, uniform sandy loam. This outstanding soil allows us to root culture our crops with advanced methods of root pruning, wrenching, and nutrient management. At Olympia, USDA Plant Hardiness Zone 7, we grow a wide assortment of conifer and deciduous seedlings and transplants including difficult to propagate species.

In 2000 we built our first modern greenhouse in Olympia Washington. Production has grown to 900,000 plugs across 40 species. Initially we intended to provide plugs for our own operations but demand for conifer and deciduous plugs was such that we now list a variety of species for sale as plugs.

All of our stock is sold bareroot. We grow most of our product in open fields for one or more growing seasons. Then we dig, grade, count and bundle our plants for storage and shipment. Wholesale quantities are sold in bundles of generally 10 to 100 plants. Most of our broadleaf deciduous species are dug in the fall and early winter after they are fully dormant. We dig our conifers grown at the Olympia nursery in mid-winter and at the Plains nursery as early as possible in the spring. All stock is held in cold storage until shipped. We have modern cold storage facilities totaling over 500,000 cubic feet of refrigerated and humidified storage.

We propagate our nursery stock from both seed and rooted cuttings; today Lawyer Nursery, Inc. offers one of the largest selections of field grown nursery stock in the wholesale nursery trade.