Forest Hill is the “Nursery Capital of Louisiana,” and the oldest of some 200 nurseries in this central Louisiana area is Sam Stokes Nursery. The man who started it all in 1901, Samuel Stokes, is the great-grandfather of 72-year-old Sam Stokes, who is now seeing his son-in-law and daughter take the “mom and pop business” into a fifth generation of leadership.
Sam Stokes Nursery is to Forest Hill what the Rose Bowl is to postseason collegiate football games: “The Grandaddy of them All.”
It’s about a 20-minute drive from Alexandria, going south on I-49 and taking the Forest Hill exit, and following Highway 112 west almost two miles ’til you see it on the left. It’s where old Samuel bought some 40 acres for a dollar an acre in 1902.
“Bought it from the Meekers,” Sam says, “spelled just like the town.” He set up shop in an area at the time known as Midway because it was halfway between Lecompte and Forest Hill. That’s where the business continues to thrive. “You are in Midway,” he said with a smile.
Old Samuel started the business with his son, Samuel Nathaniel Stokes, who was called “Nat,” who later bought another adjacent 40 acres from the Burnum family, says Sam. Sam’s father, Rodney, opened a new nursery business, Rodney’s Greenhouse, in 1965, and in 1977, Sam and his wife Donna opened Sam Stokes Nursery as a wholesale business. They then built the current retail roadside business in 2006. In the fall of 2017 they handed it on to their daughter Dana and her husband, 38-year-old Michael Lyles, who has been working there for 20 years and has experience working as an electrician and a building contractor.
Sam Stokes Nursery is one of the few nurseries that sells to the public, and Sam says that goes back to the way old Sam started from the beginning. Selling plants to the public in the early years is what helped great-grandpa Sam put food on the table.
Few family businesses survive past a second generation, Sam says.
Asked to what he attributes the longevity of this family operation, Sam says, “Somebody’s got to get their butt out of bed at 4 a.m. in the morning to start seeing to it every day.” That kind of necessary work ethic seems to have been in-bred in his family, but Sam admits he’d have to close shop if it weren’t for the help of up to a dozen migrants from Mexico. You know the reason. It’s hard to find native-born Americans willing to do the work.
One of the things Michael has done since taking leadership of the business is grafting pecan trees because, he says, “it’s a dying skill, a dying art.” He learned how to do it from a 92-year-old retired county agent in Leesville, Mac Walter, who now does that as a hobby.
Michael also works with the H-2A program, which allows U.S. employers who meet specific regulatory requirements to bring foreign nationals to the United States to fill temporary agricultural jobs.
“It costs a lot and is a lot of paperwork,” says Michael, “but it’s worth it for what they give us.”
On a nursery complex with 50 greenhouses, they work long, grueling hours, especially in the spring. They reside in bunk houses on the grounds and are paid almost double the minimum wage, says Lyles.
Dana Lyles, who retired in May as a career educator, has come to the forefront in recent years as the nursery’s point person for social media.
“We’ve found that to be a much larger part of the business than anyone contemplated 15 years ago,” she said. “They not only want to know about growing a hibiscus, but they want to see what our dogs (Lillie Pearl, Mollie and Oliver) are doing.”
Dana was also a spokesperson for the nursery a few years ago during Covid, when she was asked by a reporter if the pandemic had spawned a “gardening renaissance” and she said yes. “People found they had to slow down, stay home and could do things you have to do to grow a plant.”
“And new customers came,” says Sam, “a lot of young people came in. And most – I’d guess 90 percent – of the people who come here are repeat customers.”
Sam Stokes Nursery, which has survived freezes, ice storms, droughts and hurricanes, not only survived Covid, it thrived.
Can’t resist the temptation to call it a blooming business.
