It wasn’t the kind of encouragement Joel Jackson wanted to hear. In fact, it was pretty discouraging.But there he was — Joel Jackson, a landscaper’s son who wanted to be a farmer — being told by his buddy, “I don’t think you’ll be able to come to our meeting because you grow trees. I don’t think they call that farming.””That was quite a shot in the gut because that’s what I was trying to do,” Jackson says today. “I wanted to be a farmer, but use my background and my resources to do it in a way that I was able.”Apparently, his plan worked. Today, the 29-year-old Jackson and his fast-growing family — wife Amanda, daughters Laurel (7), Ella Blake (5), Audrey (2) and year-old twins Minnie Beck and Joel Norman — are the winners of the Greenhouse, Nursery & Sod Division of the Alabama Farmers Federation’s Outstanding Young Farm Family competition.His secret? Think big by thinking small.”I grew up landscaping with my father all my life, and I wanted to do something to stay in the family business, but still kind of venture out on my own. I had a dream that I wanted to farm, but I didn’t have 5,000 acres left to me by my Dad’s great aunt,” Joel says laughing. “So, I saw it probably wasn’t going to work unless we could grow something on a small piece of property, and with my ties in landscaping, this is where I landed.”Where he “landed” was right at home in the Matthews community just south of Montgomery where he overtook a holding area for the materials yard of his father’s landscaping business. It was there he began working hard to grow his container tree farm from a small, niche business into … well, a bustling niche business.Amanda remembers it this way. “Right after we got married — I think it was right before Christmas — he said, ‘I have a great idea. I want to grow trees.’ I said, ‘What?!’ He said, ‘This is a great idea. I’m going to start out with seedlings, and I’m going to grow trees. I’m going to be a tree farmer.’ It sounded crazy, but it worked.”Greenwood Growers, Inc., got its start in 2000 as Joel and Amanda ordered 4,000 bare-root seedlings, and grew them into a three-gallon container the first year and a 15-gallon container the next. Today, that corner of his father’s materials yard has become about 12 acres in production, holding about 200,000 trees — almost all propagated by seed or cuttings — and featuring roughly 60 different varieties.Of course, it didn’t happen overnight. Along the way, Joel began noticing something about the landscape business: Everybody, or so it seemed, grew trees to a 15-gallon container. “There seemed to be more people selling the larger trees than there were selling the trees to supply those people with the tree,” Joel said.Deciding to become a supplier to landscapers and developers, Joel began researching the market. That led to the discovery of a company that utilized a container technology called “air root pruning,” which essentially creates what he calls a “hairball of roots” that gives a tree a faster, more vigorous start — an important consideration because, he said, “developers don’t always plan a development around the trees — they want to put the trees where they want them.” It was a discovery that changed the direction of the Jacksons’ company.”That gave me a chance to grow more product on a smaller piece of property,” said Joel. “Five to seven-gallon containers are where the bulk of the sales are, and that’s where the bulk of the focus of the business is now. Most of what we do is sell smaller trees to other growers around the Southeast who then grow them out to a larger size.”He’s now experimenting with forestry and wildlife products, such as loblolly pines in containers with the fibrous root system and certain oak varieties that produce a sweeter acorn that attracts deer. “I wouldn’t mind expanding into some vegetables and other aspects of farming as we’re able to do it,” Joel adds.So far, Joel said, the company has “almost doubled” in size every year. “We’re going to continue to grow until the headache outgrows us and as long as we’ve got the space to put it on and can afford to get more space,” he said. “We haven’t had to make the choice and say, ‘Hey, we’re getting too big!’ That day might come, but it hasn’t yet.” In the meantime, just being able to farm has its own rewards for Joel and his family. His father, Jack Jackson, has scaled down his own landscaping business to only a few customers and is spending his semi-retirement working with his son. “I keep him pretty busy, I just don’t pay him what he wants,” Joel says, laughing. “Actually, I don’t pay him anything at all, but every now and then I’ll buy him a tank of fuel.”Amanda, who grew up helping plant tobacco on her grandparents’ farm near Greenville, helps answer the phone and handles bookkeeping. The kids also lend a hand, trimming trees, picking up pots blown over by the wind and taking inventory. Laurel, a second-grader at Montgomery Academy, even helped Mom and Dad create a poster to advertise the business.”If she eats an apple, she takes the seeds out and puts ’em in an envelope because she wants her daddy to plant them and grow her some apple trees,” said Amanda. “… They tell everybody, ‘My daddy grows trees. They love it.” Joel loves it, too — even if his buddy didn’t think growing trees was farming.”I don’t think he realized how bad he hurt me when he said it,” Joel said with a laugh. “I don’t think he had a clue as to what he was really telling me. … If we’re not farmers, we’ve got a lot of the same headaches — at least, we can gripe about the same things.”