Spring is on the horizon and if you’re like me, you’re anxious to start digging in the dirt and get a garden planted. Herbs are ready at the Parkside High School garden center in Salisbury and it won’t be long before the entire nursey is exploding with color.

A+ Garden Centre, operated by the students in the CTE (Career Technology Education) program, is the largest business for high school students in the United States, said program instructor Jerry Kelley. “No one is even close,” he pointed out. The garden center is open Monday – Friday, 8 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. and Saturday, 8 am. – 1 p.m. Every inch of three greenhouses is filled with herbs to plant now, spring plants and hanging baskets. Herbs include lavender, chives, stevia, oregano, rosemary, and many more. I’m leaning toward all three types of mint for my garden – apple, chocolate and orange.

 Annuals and perennials will be ready at the end of the month, and vegetable plants will be ready for sale at the beginning of May. Kelley said they used to start selling vegetable plants in April, but it is still cold for outdoor planting so they decided to delay their sale this year.

Just this week, the 24 students in the horticulture program planted 12,000 “plugs,” young plants from the grower, Proven Winners, in pots to grow in the greenhouses in an astounding 55 minutes, a Parkside record. They spent months prepping for the endeavor to undertake the project in the most efficient way. “We have a saying, ‘If you’re not doing it fast, you’re not doing it right,’” Kelley said, and followed it up with what he tries to instill, “Do it right, and fast, the first time.”

“We had the Guinness World Record for the most plants planted,” he continued. “It was broken by a guy in England but we’re going to reclaim it!”

The horticulture program is one of nearly 20 CTE programs at Parkside. Typically, in 9th grade, students interested in the vocational programs pick four to try for a couple of weeks before settling on one. Horticulture is a three-year program, with one period a day spent in instruction. Students learn about greenhouse organization, crop production, and business practices. It’s a lot more than just planting plants! Selling to the public is actually the smallest portion of what the students do, Kelley explained. That’s about 10 weeks of the school year, while the rest is spent on research, growing methods, and even artwork and designing the garden center’s website. During the summer, students are researching and writing reports.

Each spring, students completing the program have the opportunity to take the horticulture exam offered by the Maryland Nursery and Landscape Association. The entire class passed last year, Kelley said, with each student earning the designation of Certified Professional Horticulturist.

A visit to the greenhouse will impress anyone when you see the amount and variety of plants for sale. Spring is for herbs, flowers and veggies, then in fall they have their signature selections of pansies, mums and perennials available. In winter, the greenhouses are filled with poinsettias for holiday decorating. Once their spring stock is sold, the garden center will still be open all summer because they carry locally grown herbal tea from Habanera Farm in Tyaskin and local honey year-round.

Kelley, in his 12th year of teaching at Parkside, comes from a gardening family. His parents owned a nursery in Maryland, outside Washington, D.C., but after his father passed away when Kelley was in high school, his mom closed the business. The garden center’s biggest customer was a department store executive who then hired Kelley to do displays. His career in fashion merchandising took off and he worked in the field for quite a few years. When he moved to the Eastern Shore and saw the Parkside greenhouses, he saw the potential for great things. One greenhouse was only partly being used, while the other half needed to be cleaned out. Now, the greenhouses are so full it looks like there is hardly room for more, but Kelley and the students are continually adding on. The community has embraced the greenhouse in every season.

“Taxpayers have not paid for any of this,” he explained. “We’ve been able to expand by the support of the community.”  Kelley is proud that the garden center has been designated an All-America Selections Display Garden which means they have new, never-before sold varieties of plants for sale. Long planting boxes between the parking lot and the greenhouses will be filled with these award-winning plants this spring.

The horticulture students are continually researching everything, Kelley said. If they grow it, they try to research it. The A+ Garden Centre website, besides featuring in catalog style all the plants for sale, contains links to the students’ research projects. Students recently did research on how diffused light affects plant growth, and based on what they learned, they added an opaque wall to one side of the small greenhouse.

Yet another positive for the garden center is that the students last year adopted the Furnace Town Historic Site gardens in Snow Hill. They are growing some of the All-America Selections there, so Furnace Town visitors can enjoy beautiful and novel varieties.

A+ Garden Centre has built a reputation not only in the area, but across the country as a model of success for what a high school vocational program can accomplish. Kelley enjoyed sharing stories of his students’ success, noting several have won well-known competitions. The center won the Maryland Future Farmers of American Plant Science Competition the last eight years and students are regularly chosen for honors after submitting research. All the horticulture students have gone on to college, as well.

Be sure to stop in soon to the garden center. Whether it’s a few herbs to start a small kitchen garden or you’re planning your biggest fruit and vegetable garden yet, you’re sure to be pleased with the quality and variety all made possible by the students’ hard work.



Here’s a reminder on the hours. A+ is open during school hours Monday through Friday, and Saturday mornings until 1 p.m. They accept cash and checks for payment. While they had considered accepting credit cards, Kelley said it would have raised garden prices because of fees and adding new technology so they decided against it. 

Now let’s get growing!