Entrepreneur's interest in gardening went to seed
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Renee's Garden
Seed specialist Renee Shepherd offers 11 types of sunflowers. Some are grown for ornamental use, others for their edible seed.
Renee Shepherd had her date with destiny on a California soccer field. She was playing in a co-ed league that included many foreign-born players. There she happened to meet a Dutch seed salesman.
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Already an avid gardener, she complained to him that the seeds she ordered rarely grew as expected. He offered her some seed to try, and the results were as good or better than he had promised.
"I thought if I like them this well, then others will like them, too," she said.
He offered to help her get seeds for her company, and in 1985, she began Shepherd's Garden Seed, a mail-order supplier of seed for vegetables, herbs and flowers.
Then, in 1997, she switched gears away from catalog sales and began to market her seeds to retail stores, as Renee's Garden. She also has a Web site that sells to gardeners (www.reneesgarden.com), but there is no print catalog.
Ms. Shepherd will be in town March 11 for the Western Pennsylvania Gardening and Landscape Symposium, discussing "What's New and Unique From Seed?"
This busy entrepreneur said her seed selection may be more diverse than what's usually found on seed racks in hardware stores, but that shouldn't put off gardeners.
She and her staff grow out every single seed selection, she said, and choose which ones to market based on ease of growing.
The company also includes detailed instructions on every seed packet. Ms. Shepherd writes all the cultural instructions herself and said she modifies them when she gets feedback from her customers.
WHEN: 8:40 a.m.-4:30 p.m. March 11; garden marketplace (free, open to public) and lectures
WHERE: Chatham College, Shadyside
COST: $100, includes lunch, all lectures
SCHEDULE:
9 a.m.: "Outside the Not So Big House," Julie Moir Messervy
10:30 a.m.: "Twigonometry: Twig Trellis and Beyond," Greg Speichert also: "Outstanding Garden Performers," Jim Nau
1:15 p.m.: "What's New and Unique From Seed?" Renee Shepherd also: "Vines and Climbers," Jeff Jabco
2:30 p.m.: "Great Little Gardens," Anthony Noel
3:30 p.m.: "Water Gardening for Everyone," Greg Speichert
SPONSORS: Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, Penn State Cooperative Extension, the Botanic Garden of Western Pennsylvania and Chatham College
PRE-REGISTRATION: (required) Phipps Garden Center 412-441-4442
"We are all avid gardeners here, and other avid gardeners tend to resonate with that," she said. She also takes suggestions for adding seed to her line. Okra and collard have been requested and will soon be sold.
Culinary interest is what brought her to seeds in the first place, and her seed line reflects that. Vegetable selections include 11 types of lettuces, six kinds of peppers, seven types of squash, nine tomatoes and much more.
If you want to try something a little bit different, you can get chard, tomatillo, several types of kale, pak choi and mache, a green used in salads.
"The varieties I sell are chosen for what's best for production in the home garden. On the vegetable side, I sell some excellent hybrids. I sell no genetically modified or treated seeds," said Ms. Shepherd, who is also an organic gardener.
She also sells a wide selection of herb seeds and many varieties of flowers, of course. About half of her business is flower seeds, including calendula, cosmos, nigella and some luscious zinnia mixes. Eleven types of sunflowers are available, some good for ornamental use, others more for their edible seed.
Sweet peas -- another flower that has enjoyed a renewed popularity -- come in 24 varieties, including some mixes. Nasturtiums can be used for ornament or in salads. These easy-to-grow beauties, which, by the way, like poor soil, come in 10 varieties.
Just in case you have great success in growing food crops but don't quite know what to do with all that bounty, Ms. Shepherd has written two cookbooks: "Recipes From a Kitchen Garden" and "More Recipes From a Kitchen Garden."
The two books (a third is on the way) are arranged in alphabetical order for quick reference. They are aimed at a busy cook who wants to do something a little different with her produce but has limited time in the kitchen.
As an avid gardener, Ms. Shepherd realizes that growing vegetables and flowers from seed isn't for everybody. But you can hardly fault her for wanting to change that opinion.
"If you want the very best-tasting things, the most diversity and variety, the most fragrance and the most color, growing with seeds is still the way to achieve that, plus you are connecting hand-in-hand with people across the generations."
Not only that, growing from seed is pretty darn economical.
"You can have 40 plants from a packet of zinnia seeds, so you can share them around. You can have an abundance of plants for next to nothing."
If she does nothing else, she hopes to encourage gardeners to at least give growing from seed a shot.
"There are very few pleasures as rewarding as going from a hard round thing to a beautiful bouquet. That has a lot of satisfaction."
Renee Shepherd
Nigella, also known as Love-in-a-Mist, blooms in shades of blue and purple. Flower seeds account for about half of Renee Shepherd's business.
First Published February 18, 2006 12:00 am
