To stretch her budget, she began putting in vegetables and fruit—everything from strawberry beds to apple trees—and as her first seedlings grew, her spirits lifted.

I was standing between the embankment and the road, there were fields around me, and fruit trees, and further on a nursery with greenhouses.

“In a nursery setting, say something under five or 10 years, it's really easy,” said Bill Werner, one of the group's tree propagators.“But as they get older, material doesn't seem to respond as well.