What awful news. I hate to be too crass, but do you think mail order is still up and running? I checked the HW website, and there's no indication of being shut down.

I wonder if it would be of any use to boycott Burpee. I have bought flower and vegetable seeds from Burpee occasionally in the past, and don't plan to ever purchase anything from them again.

It's too little too late, but I did send an email to Burpee's chiding them on their extremely unfortunate decision to close Heronswood. As if they care at all!!

One of the great things that Heronswood did accomplish was the introduction of a lot of great plant material into widespread distribution, so with fewer and fewer exceptions over the years, a lot of what was once only available through Heronswood is now available elsewhere, both through mail order or at independent retail nurseries, specially here in the northwest.

I personally have no compunctions about boycotting Burpee's and would encourage other NW gardeners to consider a similar action. They now offer little if anything that can't be obtained elsewhere and their deplorable action of taking a world-class operation and running it into the ground and finally closure should not be rewarded. And considering that the current activity in Kingston is focused on packing up and shipping the stock back east, I'd say attention to mail order requests would be low on the priority list.

Dan and Robert, I hope you know you have the support of Northwest gardeners who are taking this closure very personally. We can only hope that you will continue to treat the gardening world to your skill at plantsmanship and that a new, improved Heronswood equivalent will be with us soon. And while my Heronswood shopping (always in person) has declined over the years with an already abundantly planted garden, I will sorely miss those frequent visits to the Garden Opens, lectures, classes and other events.

I first discovered Heronswood in 1992 when we purchased our first home in Kingston. I used to read the catalog as much for entertainment as for information. I LOVED going to the opens and visiting the gardens.
When we sold our house last year, the realtor told me that our yard was a huge selling point (I left many Heronsood babies there).
I'm just aching. (And so angry at Burpee)

I'm simply sad. I looked forward to the "old" Heronswood catalogs for bedtime reading and daydreaming. I'm still reading and re-reading the 2005 catalog. I looked forward to placing two orders a year (Spring and Fall), only a few plants (4-6) each time, but always really unique plants. I looked forward to Dan's tales of his botanizing adventures.

I'm not fiscally, and perhaps not physically up to doing my OWN botanizing, so I relied on Dan Hinkley (and others) to do it for me. Now I'm going to have to get into high-altitude rock-scrambling trekking shape so I CAN botanize when I retire. Sure, that's 13 years from now, but it will take at least 5 years to get into that kind of shape.

Burpee had no clue what they had or what to do with Heronswood, so they destroyed it. I'm now boycotting everything owned by the Ball family, including Burpee, Ball, Wave Petunias and anything else I find associated with Ball.

You're dropping the Ball? I don't think I ever did buy anything from Burpee anyway. When they bought Heronswood I visualized the Burpee and Heronswood catalogs being melded together, maybe they are actually starting a move in that direction. Eventually something like Wayside Gardens, perhaps? Anyway, it means that left coasters will have to rely even more on places like Cistus and Colvos for locally adapted exotic plants (Californian, Chilean, Mediterranean, South African) as PA is not going to be able to host too many of these.

My immediate strategy for the loss of Heronswood (other than feeling very sad and boycotting Ball and Burpee) is to place an increased focus on growing from seed. The North American Rock Garden Society (NARGS) has an amazing seed exchange program. Silverhill Seeds and Fine Bush People can cover my South African plant seed cravings. Ron Ratko and Alplains can cover my Western North America plant seed interests. I'll have to join the Chris Chadwell list for Himalayan plants. And then there's JJA Seeds and Chiltern Seeds--that should about do it.

Since I'm not living and gardening in the PNW, I took a lot of chances with Heronswood's offerings. MOST of them survive and even thrive, especially if I learn from my failures and re-site plants (or put new ones in more favorable micro-environments).

I also hope that Colvos Creek and Cistus can scale up their mail-order businesses to take up the slack.

Dan and Robert,
Whatever shall we do? You singlehandedly led me beyond the limited palette of American gardening as I knew it. I suppose it would be accurate to say that the gardens of my past were very much "Burpee" gardens in that I had Wave petunias, geraniums, hybrid tomatoes...but Heronswood and the catalogs opened my eyes to horticultural riches never imagined. I am so grateful for the new relationship I have with my garden and the world of plants and plantsmen and women. My first visit to Heronswood was a birthday present, the best I've ever received, and I remember wandering through the hydrangeas in awe seeing that this was not the ordinary shrub I had thought, recoiling in shock at the size of the hairy gunnera leaves (easily imagining dinosaurs that must have known it), tucking down to find small treasures beneath the leaves of other plants on the paths, and the blue border. There is a tree near the front window of the house whose name I don't even recall, only the feeling that if I could live near it life would be better.

If there is anything at all that I can do to help keep the garden intact, please let me know. And please come back to the nursery business after the non-compete clause term ends.
Thank you again and again for what you have given to all of us with your travels, writing, lectures, and collecting. It's a joy to feel that because I garden in the Pacific Northwest and know your work, I belong to something most fine.

Sue Hopkins

Every time I look at my Asarums, I think of a brief piece Dan wrote about one of his interns EATING said Asarums :-)

Lisa

I could live vicariously through Dan while reading his catalog. I chose to have a family and settle down, but I could have adventures in plant collecting through his essays. You gentlemen provided a great service to us for many years, and Burpee can't take that away. Your collections live on in our gardens, as do your memory.

Dear Dan and Robert....
I am just one anonymous member of the large community that is deeply offended about how your artistic creation and hard won plant introductions are being treated. I hope that at some point you will be free to share your perspective and wishes with the large garden community which would like to perserve both the garden and the plant collection. I have no idea how you are feeling about this but I keep thinking that you believed that the staff you had trained and nurtured would continue to oversee and protect your garden and the nursery stock you had developed through your explorations and that this staff would continue to have secure employment doing what they loved, that in a sense you had thought your children were in good hands. I suspect that you may be feeling betrayed. I hope you can let us know what is most important to you. I respect what you have accomplished and would like very much to honor your wishes. Personally I feel very concerned that some of the plants you have brought back from the far reaches of the earth may be lost to cultivation in the US. I hope that you will be able to speak to us about this. I realize that your contract with Burpee may prevent you from speaking directly to the garden community. My thoughts are with you and with the staff of Heronswood. jwww

I loved visiting your gardens here, and have not been able to buy as much as I would have liked to. I do have a young Magnolia wilsonii I purchased as a two-leaf baby from your nursery; if you would like you are welcome to have a bit of it for your new gardens. You wrote with such fondness of it in your catalog that I thought you might find it a rememberance. It was an impulse purchase for me. I smelled a wonderful fragrence, tracked it down and looked up into this wonderful tree. I had to have it. Whatever your contract, I'm sure you can still have a personal garden. If any of your staff wish some they're welcome as well to the extent the tree can bear, it's about four feet tall and well branched.

Perhaps others would be willing to share starts also? Do you or your staff have favorites you had to leave that we might be able to supply?

Good luck with your newest plants that you get to keep and start afresh with, whether or not you ever join the fray of retail again.

I'll be happy to contribute a division of the Paeonia veitchii ssp. woodwardii I bought several years ago, an Aconitum hemsleyanum seedling/small plant, and a division of the Asarum lemonii I offered to Dan last year--it survived the winter and is growing happily.

Lisa