Good Afternoon John and Carol,

I thought I’d let you know that I’ve been buying plants from you for the past 2 years, and I’ve been so pleased with these Manitoba native prairie plants, I’ve been telling EVERYONE about you!!!! Many people (family, friends and co-workers) have visited our native prairie garden, which happens to be the whole backyard, and they are just amazed by it all! So many of them have started buying from you as well, and I’ve also been able to give away some of my seedlings that have naturally been propagating themselves in the garden to show them how easy they are to grow!

Both Jeff and I grew up in the country but we’ve seen species of birds, butterflies, dragonflies, moths and bees in our garden in Windsor Park, WPG which we’ve never seen before!! They are definitely attracted by these native species growing in the city and we welcome their visits. Despite a less than ideal growing season this year for growing anything, I must say our native species of plants did very well – everything bloomed this year, even the plants that didn’t last year in their first year of planting (such as the Wild Rose bushes, Tall Coneflowers, Culver’s Roots, Meadow Blazingstars, Swamp Milkweeds, and Wild Bergamots).

And I thought I’d let you know that our Tall Coneflowers did not grow to 6’ tall as stated in your catalogue… instead they grew to a TALLER 7 ½ ‘ !!! Just beautiful and very unexpected seeing as last year they didn’t grow any taller than 2’ and spread out instead, not blooming. This year they grew as fast as a magic giant bean stalk and bloomed a gazillion beautiful yellow blooms!!! What an amazing sight to see! I thought I’d send you a photograph so you can see for yourself! I’ve planted them along the north side of our fence which is just over 5’ tall, which gives them partial shade. And I don’t give ANYTHING to my plants to make them grow. I simply plant them in our soil (a mix of topsoil, peat moss and sand) and see if they’ll survive in the natural elements. And they’ve all thrived – none have died!

So I thought I’d share this joyful prairie garden story with you seeing as I simply LOVE what you’re doing with Prairie Habitats and I am encouraging many more to grow wild native plants from you! I refer them to your website so they can see all the plants in color and read about you. I will be buying a lot more from you next Spring as well, because I’ll be converting the front yard into a native prairie garden as well and we’d like to add much more grasses too!

Best regards: Lucille Verrier, Winnipeg, MB, November 6, 2004 - Close window