Publication date:2-23-99

For more gardening tips provided by Ed Hutchison, call Times-News onCALL, 452-2000, from any touch-tone phone, and enter category 7931.

ED HUTCHISON / Contributing photographer

Seed packets from Renee's Seeds feature a watercolor portrait of the plant and lots of useful growing information and often, a recipe.

Small companies offer old-fashioned seeds, old-fashioned service

Buying seeds and plants by mail from the General Motors companies of the gardening world is great. Service is usually top-notch, prices are in line and the selection is wide.

The little guys have a lot to offer, too. Their catalogs aren't as big or colorful and the shipping containers a bit less sleek, but often a call to headquarters reaches the guy who grew, harvested, packed and handed over your order to the UPS driver.

Case in point: Last fall I wanted to replace three towering burning bushes behind our garage with several clumps of ornamental grass. On an Internet search, I located a small nursery in suburban Chicago and made contact. It's a husband-wife operation but their service matched, or exceeded, what I typically receive from the big guys.

By e-mail and phone we chatted about sun, spacing, soil, shapes, winter color, shipping and all sorts of details that helped me feel comfortable that I was buying the right plants for the right place - which is one of the Ten Commandments of gardening. A few weeks after the process began, my plants arrived on time and in perfect condition from the nursery. I highly recommend this company, AAA Ornamentals, as a great source for traditional and unusual varieties of ornamental grasses and hosta (7 South 273 Mary Drive, Big Rock, IL 60511; (630) 556-4507; www.hostas.com; price lists can be downloaded free via the Internet).

With the 1999 gardening season not far off, here's a snapshot look at a few other companies that, from my experience, provide exceptional service and product:

Renee's Garden -- Renee Shepherd sold her mail-order seed company (Shepherd's Seeds) a few years ago to a larger firm. She's returned to the seed business, but with a new company. I met Renee several years ago when I visited her southern California home and garden and was impressed by what she was trying to bring to gardeners -- vegetables that tasted good and performed well in the garden but for a variety of reasons were not easily available in the marketplace. Many were varieties popular in Europe. Her catalog offered recipes and soon branched into flowers.

Her mission continues but is taking a new path. Her company's vegetable and flower seeds are available through garden centers and nurseries but not by mail. Each packet features a watercolor portrait of the variety as well as sensible and well-written growing instructions. Most packets have an extra flap for gardening ideas and recipes she's developed for that particular cultivar.

Old House Gardens -- owner Scott Kunst specializes in flower bulbs that were popular hundreds of years ago but are hard to find now, mostly because the big growers have moved on to what they consider better, or at least, better-selling varieties. Most of his business is in hyacinths, tulips, daffodils and other spring-flowering bulbs, but summer-flowering material (canna, lilies, glads and dahlias) are available in the spring.

His catalog offers an engrossing history lesson about flowers of the 16th century forward. Here's what he had to say about Allium Yellow Molly, which was introduced in 1596: "A native of southern Europe, Yellow Molly has long been reputed to ward off witches and bring food fortune. Garden books in the 1800s usually listed it first among the alliums. ..." A year's subscription to Kunst's catalog is $2 (536 Third St., Ann Arbor, MI 48103-4957; (734) 995-1486; www.oldhousegardens.com).

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange -- Herbs, vegetables and annual and perennial flowers are this company's focus, especially varieties that were introduced prior to 1940. But they've got new stuff, too, like Chinese Five-Color pepper. This variety is an ornamental hot pepper that bears fruit that changes color as it matures. Purple begins, going to creamy-yellow, yellow, orange and finally red. The company grows 40 percent of the seed it sells -- a high percentage, as many seed companies typically hire out much of the actual growing of their seeds. The 66-page catalog is packed with useful information about each variety the company offers and is well worth its $2 price (P.O. Box 170, Earlysville, VA 22936; (804) 973-4703; www.southernexposure.com).

You also may want to consider shopping with a few other larger, but still fairly small, seed companies. Each has provided me excellent service in the past: Ed Hume Seeds Inc., P.O. Box 1450, Kent, WA 98035, $1 for catalog: Tomato Growers Supply Co., P.O. Box 2237, Fort Myers, FL 33902, free catalog; and Seeds of Change, P.O. Box 15700, Santa Fee, NM 87506-5700, free catalog.

The Mailorder Gardening Association offers a $2 guide to names, addresses and specialties of 139 garden catalog companies (Dept. SC-7, PO Box 2129, Columbia, MD 21045).

READERS' COMMENTS,

questions and ideas for articles are always welcome. Write Hutchison in care of the Times Publishing Company, 4621 Congress Drive, Midland, MI 48642. His e-mail address is ECHutchi@aol.com.

February 22, 1999

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