No one who’s known Chris Urban since childhood is surprised that he’s a tree guy. His Boro Hill Nursery is on land his parents bought in the early 1970s in Monkton. The surrounding forest provided a vast playground for Urban, his two siblings and their friends. As a kid, he built trails, forts and tunnels among the trees. With his dad, he learned to recognize different species.
“I remember he helped me with a sixth-grade tree identification project, for which I got an A+,” Urban said of his father. “It was a formative experience because I was unaware of all the plant diversity.”
Now, 1,000 young trees grow on a section of the property that slopes toward the Monkton-Vergennes Road — and Urban’s former elementary school. Urban chose the dozens of species for their resilience in a rapidly changing climate. Bonus: They’re also beautiful.
Boro Hill is not a retail operation with standard business hours, nor does Urban want it to be; instead, he calls it a production nursery. Prospective clients might find him online or through word of mouth. Visits to the nursery are by appointment only, plus for pop-up sales in spring and fall. The business doesn’t even have a sign by the road. Urban said his priorities are relationships with clients and helping them realize their landscaping visions with “the right trees for their habitats.”
While Sam Schoenhuber and Wyatt Thompson manage the day-to-day responsibilities at the nursery, Urban handles site visits, bids, consultations and designs. “I’m in a unique position to work with a person as designer and ecologist,” he said.
Urban’s journey from playing among trees to raising them, if inevitable, was a bit circuitous. At Bates College in Maine, he earned a degree in environmental studies with a concentration in ecology. Then he put away the books and spent half his twenties working for several Vermont nurseries, immersing himself in the business of growing and selling plants. He also taught English to migrant farmworkers in Vermont. That led, in 2008, to a non-botanical gig: teaching Spanish at Harwood Union Middle & High School in Duxbury.
Three years later, Urban and his wife, Mara, launched their sustainability-focused nursery; both have retained their jobs in education (she works for the extended learning program in the Mount Abraham Unified School District). Since Boro Hill opened, the couple have added three children to the family and two employees to the business.
Now 44, Urban has a lot on his plate. But the nursery seems to nurture him as much as his trees.
It feels good to sell people trees.
Chris Urban
“I always loved growing things and using my body,” he said. “It feels good to sell people trees.” He has an aptitude for the long game, finding a parallel in teaching students and raising healthy plants: “Over time, you get to see them grow and flourish.”
Mary Slosar and Luis Camacho of Weybridge like Urban’s yard-side manner. They hired him in early 2024 to reimagine and transform their two adjacent properties — an 1850s farmhouse, now used as a guesthouse and Airbnb, and a newly built home.
“We asked Chris to consult with us and dream up what we could do with that part of the property,” Slosar said of the farmhouse. “He helped us dream up a foundation garden. Now it’s almost in full bloom [with] fothergilla, winterberry, inkberry, chokeberry, [black-eyed] Susans, grasses for texture and movement. We’re slowly putting in trees and always consult with him,” she added. “He’s my go-to guy if I say, ‘What if we do this?’”
Though Boro Hill grows only deciduous trees, Urban said he has accounts at other local nurseries to procure evergreens and perennials for clients as needed.
Whether he sources trees locally or out of state, they will spend a few years in Vermont soil at his nursery, Urban said. Their bare roots are wrapped in black fabric grow bags and treated with homemade compost and a biostimulant from North Country Organics in Bradford. He grows, as his website proclaims, “superior cultivars of hardy and disease-resistant fruit, shade and ornamental trees.” Urban underscores this promise with a catchy slogan: “Raised Right Here, to Fight Climate Change Everywhere!”
When the friend building Boro Hill’s website was considering how to differentiate his nursery from others, Urban recalled, “I wanted some aspect of social justice. Not just to install the nicest-looking plants but ones that are good for the ecosystem and promote more biodiversity.”
Diversity is the operative word. Maple, birch, beech, redbud, hawthorn, oak and others stand in orderly rows at Boro Hill, their leaves rustling in the breeze. There are plenty of fruit trees, too. If global warming has any upside, perhaps it’s that peach trees can survive in Vermont.
Just ask Mark Groves. This spring, on his five-acre property in Charlotte, Urban “planted four maple trees, fruit trees — two apples, a peach and two plums — and foundation plantings in front of the house,” Groves said. “Also, cedars in the back for a privacy screen and some lilac bushes.”
Working with Urban and his staff was “great,” Groves said. “He’s very knowledgeable, attentive and patient. Chris continues to give us ideas.”
Urban’s devotion to climate-adaptive plants includes “not bringing in invasive species,” he noted. The trees are thoroughly examined before they arrive.
The struggle is real, as Vermonters know. Japanese beetle, spongy moth, ash borer, cedar-apple rust and other flora foes have converged on the Green Mountain State in recent years. As for that other ubiquitous pest — for people and animals — Urban said this: “When I was playing in the woods as a kid, I never saw any ticks.”
Unwelcome insects aside, Urban said planting trees — whether on lawns or along city streets — reconnects him with his childhood and the land that inspired him.
“Of all the jobs out there,” Urban added, “it’s good, honest work that gives back, that leaves the world a better place.” ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Branch Management: Boro Hill Nursery grows resilient trees and human connections”
This article appears in Nest • Summer 2026.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
