One of the fun things about running a plant nursery is that you get a chance to literally change the local landscape. If you sell the usual run of common plants, like the big box stores do, you don’t get to see this effect. But it you’re selling things that are more unusual, you get to see your influence around town. At least you do if you’re in a rural area/small town like I am.

A number of years ago I was given cuttings of “Mozart” rose. It’s an unusual looking rose; it has a mounding shape and has tiny, tiny five petaled flowers that are brilliant dark pink with white at the base. It stays covered with these blooms for much of summer. Many people do not recognize this plant as a rose when the first see it, but they find it attractive. This is a rose that is available some places online, but you don’t see it in garden centers. I grew out those cuttings, and took cuttings from those bushes, and started selling them at the farmer’s market.

You see them around the county now. In someone’s front yard, in a row of shrubs in a dirt road. This gives me a thrill, to see something that I grew and that the person probably wouldn’t have found and put in their yard if I hadn’t put it out there. There are other plants out there like that; things I’ve grown from seeds purchased out of some of the lower circulation catalogs. Things like polemoniums with flowers that start out peach and age to mauve. Lavenders with pale pink flowers.

It’s fun to be able to offer something different, and to see it making people happy.