Posts Tagged ‘About Mary’

Welcome to Great Garden Plants blog

Mary & Chris with their Jumbo Size Perennials at Garden Writers Symposium

After graduating from college in 1977 with a political science degree, I worked in retail management for awhile before finding myself back on home turf and working at my family wholesale perennial business, Walters Gardens, Inc.  I started packing plants and worked a few months in a tissue culture lab wanting to know what made this business tick and learning as much as I could about perennials. I even spent year study botany and organizing a wholesale catalog – thus began my horticultural & marketing career.

Mary & long time assistant Laurel Hall - Race for the Cure to fight Breast Cancer

I feel grateful to have had such a learning opportunity, especially gleaning  business & plant info from my father.   I was blessed with a great assistant, Laurel Hall who is a breast cancer survivor.  The two of us helped to develop programs where proceeds when to Susan G Koeman Foundation to help fight breast cancer. 

Joseph Campbell  once  said  “We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”  I found myself meeting up with my business partner Chris at a Trade Show in 2006 and starting Great Garden Plants in 2007.  It’s been truly an amazing & growing experience.  One of the things Chris & I were determined to do was to make gardeners happy by providing  a quality size  plant that they would enjoy.

When Chris & I started talking about a blog – we asked ourselves, what are we going to be blogging about?

As a gardener for over 25 years, I plan to share a lot of my successes and failures that will help you become a better gardener. I’ve planted many plants, killed not as many, moved more than I originally planted,  gave a lot of plants away, and surprised neighbors with various theme gardens (such as a laundry room theme).  I’m not very good at training my wanna-be gardener puppy, Chloe (a goldendoodle) who is determined to dig  holes in all the wrong places. 

I’m not a great writer, not even a good one – but I write as I see & feel it – not using some borrowed copy off the internet.  

As a horticultural photographer, you’ll see see a host of garden photos that I hope will inspire,  kindle an idea, or just make you smile.

Please join us on our gardening  adventure. We look forward to your comments!

Here’s to the glorious world of gardening!

Mary